


Saved by the bell(s)

by Never__again



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Brief mentions of past homophobia, Chanyeol is Whipped™, Fluff and Humor, M/M, Mentions of Sex, Mutual Pining, Oh Sehun is a Little Shit, Pining, Roommates, Sleepwalking, everyone is oblivious, sleepwalker!dae
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 30,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25669714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Never__again/pseuds/Never__again
Summary: Every night Chanyeol gets up at indecent hours to watch over Jongdae, his cute new roommate, who always goes on improbable adventures because of his sleepwalking episodes. As for his days, Chanyeol spends them saving Jongdae from his own clumsiness.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Park Chanyeol, side!baeksoo, side!sekai - Relationship
Comments: 48
Kudos: 160
Collections: electriFIREd Round 2





	Saved by the bell(s)

**Author's Note:**

> ElectriFIREd prompt number: EF60 
> 
> Dear prompter, I was just skimming through the prompts for this fest when I stumbled across your prompt. It seemed so fun I couldn't possibly ignore it even though it's different from what I usually write. You wanted clumsy Jongdae and whipped Chanyeol: I hope this came close to what you had in mind!  
> Dear mods, thank you for being kind to me. It was lovely to be part of this fest.
> 
> A few disclaimers:  
> I am not a sleepwalker, so what Jongdae does in this fic has been based either on the sleepwalking episodes that I have witnessed the times I went on vacation with a friend of mine who sleepwalks, or on recollections and documentaries that I found. I tried to read up and ask around as much as I could in order to provide a fun story that could be believable and respectful, and if something seems too improbable or if I strayed from my purpose I apologise.
> 
> To avoid confusion, keep in mind that in this story all of the exos are the same age.

Chanyeol sighed. He looked at his limp, dented suitcases that stood sadly in the lobby of the boys’ wing of the dorm building. 

“I did not deserve this,” he thought, idly kicking one of the suitcases and watching it drift away from him on its four wheelies. 

“I did not deserve this, not in my last ever year as a student. Fuck, if these are the premises it might not even be the last year,” he continued, mumbling to himself. 

The suitcase stopped its journey against the wall with an unsatisfying thump. “Might as well drop out.”

Baekhyun reached up to pat his shoulder. “I’d tell you to stop being dramatic, but I will let you wallow in your self-commiseration for a while more. I’m rather enjoying this.”

When he turned around, Chanyeol almost hit him in the face with the guitar case strapped on his shoulder. “I do not deserve this.”

“Yes, you do. It’s what you get for refusing to room with me.”

Chanyeol rolled his eyes. “I did not refuse to room with _you._ I chose to stop rooming with _anyone._ ”

Baekhyun shrugged. “I am not just _anyone,_ Yeol.”

Sighing, Chanyeol deflated a little. “No, you’re not. I will miss your complaints about my guitar plucking and rueful mumbling.”

“I will not miss you throwing a slipper at me whenever I dare to complain. Stop kissing my ass now, because I’m not taking you back as a roommate. My _new_ roommate is super hot and I wouldn’t trade him with you, ever.”

“Wow. Way to go, Baek. A guy you’ve known for ten minutes, over me. I’ve been your friend for twenty years.”

“Listen. You were the one who threw twenty years of friendship down the drain so you could get your precious single room.”

“I did not—”

“Park Chanyeol?” a voice called from behind him.

Chanyeol turned so quickly his guitar case almost hit her too. “Yes?” he asked, hopeful. Trying not to sound desperate.

The secretary hadn’t noticed the attempt on her life because she was paging through a folder. “This is literally the only option I have left for you. It’s a double, this is the second time the other guy renews. It has a ‘notice’ on it, though. I don’t know what that is, so maybe go see if Jinki knows something. He’s the RA of the third floor. Or maybe find out if the guy’s there and talk to him directly,” she said briefly, handing him a sticky note. “I have to go now. If I see you at the front desk before dinner I’ll prepare your papers and give you the keys. If I don’t see you, I’ll assume you’ll be looking for a flat downtown. Good luck with that, though.”

Chanyeol nodded, pocketing the sticky note with a sigh after looking at the room number on it. “Thank you.”

She walked away, and Baekhyun kicked Chanyeol’s suitcase so it rolled back to him. “Good luck, dude. I suppose I’m not completely merciless and I will let you come over sometimes if your roommate stinks. And I guess I will shelter you if you end up rooming with the reptilian and he sets his pets against you. Wouldn’t want you to lose your fingers to an iguana, you need them to rattle your keyboard and to strum and pluck your damn guitar. Such a shame that both your possible future careers depend on the functionality of your hands.”

Chanyeol tried to kick him again. “What, you’re not even helping me with the bags? I helped you move in your room this morning!”

“And I’m really thankful, but I promised my hot roommate to go grab lunch with him. You saw how hot he is. I couldn’t possibly cancel on him.”

“You’re abandoning me in such a critical moment of my life just because your roommate—okay, fair enough. He’s really hot.”

Baekhyun laughed and said goodbye by hissing and wiggling his tongue out in what he supposed would be the imitation of an iguana, leaving Chanyeol in the lobby to stare at the floor, seriously contemplating to drop out.

What had happened was really simple.

Chanyeol had decided that, to round off his studies, he was ready to enjoy the privileges that came with a single room in the dorms. He had applied for one months before any other student on campus even began to worry about a concept so abstract such as “next year”, and for months the secretary had reassured him that he was going to get it. He even traveled to see it, during the summer, and it was the room he had always dreamed of. 

After a freshman year spent trying to desperately survive cohabitation with their high school friend Sehun, who had the tendency to disappear for prolonged periods of time doing who knows what who knows where, usually with Jongin, but whose presence was extremely difficult to ignore when he was actually there, Chanyeol’s situation had went from bad to worse as he dragged himself through a very intense sophomore year. Sharing his personal space with Baekhyun and two of his friends had been bearable, but while they were always nice to him they brought the worst out of Baekhyun’s rebellious tendencies and adopted a lifestyle that was a little bit too much for Chanyeol. He was fine with partying every now and then and he went with the flow a lot, but he doubted Baekhyun’s friends had a single lucid memory of their second semester of sophomore year, having spent it attached to a) a bottle b) someone else’s mouth or c) their bed, sleeping off the hangover.

After that, Chanyeol had taken the matter into his own hands. He had personally filled in and sent the goddamn dorm application in Baekhyun’s stead _before_ the deadline, a concept unknown to Baekhyun and so revolutionary the secretary had thought the papers were counterfeit. Baekhyun not begging for a place to sleep on the first day of classes? Unheard of. 

Chanyeol had in fact forged Baekhyun’s signature.

But the end justifies the means and Chanyeol had managed to get a nice double for them. He loved Baekhyun to death, the way you love someone who has witnessed all the worst of your development ever since you were still wearing diapers, including snotty primary school heartbreaks involving ferrets, acne and braces, the diabolic impact of puberty, and messy coming out situations. Chanyeol liked rooming with Baekhyun because they knew each other like the back of their hand and could tell exactly what the other thought or needed with so much as a glance at each other.

So it wasn’t personal. Chanyeol wanted a single room because he needed to focus on his thesis and he wouldn’t mind the silence, something that Baekhyun couldn’t offer. And not having to crash at someone else’s dorm when Baekhyun brought someone over for the night would have been nice. 

Chanyeol wouldn’t have minded having someone to bring to his own room as well. 

What had happened was simple and stupid; so stupid that it couldn’t be any less than infuriating. 

Three days before the start of the semester, the secretary finally bothered to check Chanyeol’s papers properly and noticed he had made a little mistake while entering his student code, so his application was null.

Chanyeol arrived at the dorms without hope, but with a luggage that quickly multiplied into three when Baekhyun and Sehun dumped in the lobby all the stuff he had disseminated in their rooms during the past years. He spent the morning dragging them around from the lobby to the various floors following the sticky-notes-directions of the tiny secretary that he was starting to openly despise.

First she proposed to him a room with two bunk beds. Chanyeol took a single step in it, smelled sophomores (booze and unwashed socks), and turned tail right away. 

Then she proposed a double room that, despite the lovely view of the park, was inhabited by a guy who looked at him like he would have murdered him if he dared to step in. Perched on his shoulder he had an iguana pet that was obviously not allowed in the building. 

The third one was inhabited by a nice, friendly guy, but apparently by his giggly girlfriend too. There were bras and thongs hanging everywhere. Also not allowed in the building.

He wondered why this was happening to him. Of course finding a slot last minute was always difficult and only the weird, borderline dangerous roommates were left to be sorted out. But right then it felt like life was parading Chanyeol’s worst nightmares in front of him.

At least he was developing nice biceps by lifting his suitcases every other minute and bringing them around hoping each room would be the last one. 

Chanyeol really, really hoped this last guy was not a psychopath or a homophobe, or at least that he didn’t have a pot farm in the bathroom or a mold infestation on the ceiling, and repressed the need to whine out loud. He _really_ didn’t want to wake up with an iguana on his chest every morning for the rest of his miserable academic life. 

He put his forehead against the door for a second, before he knocked.

“It’s open!”

Chanyeol hadn’t expected the other guy to actually be inside. It was lunchtime by now, and while he trudged in the corridors of this new, unknown floor of the dorms he had crossed many students heading out to grab something to eat. 

The door opened with a jingle—it was already something Chanyeol disliked. Who the fuck puts bells on their dorm room door? He swore he’d throw them out of the window as soon as his roommate was not looking. He wouldn’t sign up for any hippie shit.

But then he stepped in, and he was instantly willing to pardon a bell, because the room was _really_ nice. And there was no more hippie shit in sight.

He had heard that on the third floor there had been renovations just few years before, but it was nice to see for himself that the walls were freshly painted and yet to be defiled by generations of students who hung all kinds of items on them, scabbing the plaster with the aid of kilometers of tape or, when they felt professional, with nails and pins. When they were creative, with things Chanyeol would rather not think about. Boys can be really nasty.

But that room looked quite clean, with light walls and basic tiles. The furniture was a little old and Chanyeol guessed the closet would need to be aired out, but nothing was broken and from what Chanyeol could see from the door, the bathroom fixtures in the en-suite looked shiny.

Chanyeol though he might have lucked out.

He definitely thought he was the luckiest guy ever, when the occupant of the double room turned around from where he was standing on his bed busy putting books on a shelf in a nice row, revealing a blinding smile.

“Oh, hi!” the boy greeted, and a couple of books fell from his hands. One of them landed its pointy hardcover corner on his foot, which probably hurt like a motherfucker judging by the guy’s pained grimace and the way he started jumping around on his other foot. “Fucking—sorry, hi, I was expecting someone else.”

And then, before Chanyeol could remember he had his own functioning brain to employ for an answer, the other eyed the pile of suitcases in the corridor and put the last of his books down, flopping down on the bed. “Oh, are you going to stay here?” he asked with big, hopeful eyes adorned by ridiculously long eyelashes. He started massaging his foot.

“Yes? Maybe,” Chanyeol took his time. He glanced at the suitcases as well, as if they weren’t his, and the frustration of the morning crashed upon him again. He reminded himself that psychopaths can have blinding smiles and goofy manners too. To hide their true nature or something, how was he supposed to know? “I don’t know yet. I was supposed to have a single, but I made—they made a mistake on the form and they are showing me doubles I might like. I’m Chanyeol,” he introduced himself.

“Oh, man, that sucks. I’m Jongdae. Nice to meet you. Uhm, I suppose they haven’t told you about the ‘notice.’”

Chanyeol put down his guitar case and rolled his shoulders. “Not really. They said there is one, but they didn’t know what it was about? And the RA office is empty.”

“Oh, yeah, Jinki’s probably busy with the freshmen.” Jongdae wrung his hands, nervous. “They always lose my papers. Well, uhm. I suppose it’s only right to tell you in advance that, well, you wouldn’t be the first one to turn down this room. You see, it’s a nice room, but. After my friend moved out I haven’t really found anyone else. I actually didn’t look for someone. So.”

Chanyeol tried to force his expression to remain neutral. Judging by the sudden cringe on Jongdae’s face, all pouty lips and eyebrows tilted upwards in the middle, he failed. 

“Don’t be so freaked out, it’s just embarrassing and—inconvenient. It’s totally fine if you don’t want to... well, I’m a sleepwalker.”

Chanyeol raised his brows. “Oh.”

Jongdae scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah. I talk, I get up, I do things, sometimes I try to leave the room. I’ve been told it’s creepy and I can be a handful. So. I understand if...” he trailed off. He looked down, on his bruised foot, and wiggled it a little to test whether the accident had compromised its mobility. It didn’t; but it drew the attention of Chanyeol on the fact that Jongdae possessed really small hands and feet. Cute.

Chanyeol didn’t really have a choice. It was either cute little sleepwalking guy or under a bridge. Because he was _not_ waking up with an iguana sitting on his chest.

Yet he supposed he had the right to know exactly how embarrassing and inconvenient the sleepwalking would be. Because he wasn’t thrilled about waking up with a Jongdae sitting on his chest every morning, either.

Though the more he looked at Jongdae, the more he surprised himself thinking that he wouldn’t really mind if Jongdae decided to sit on his chest. Or on any other part of his body for that matter.

He was suddenly aware of the necessity of shoving that thought very far back into the corner of his mind where it came from. Or else _he_ was going to become the creepy roommate of the pair.

“Uhm. Tell me more?”

Jongdae sat with his head hung low. “ I just do stuff, as if I was awake. I don’t remember anything. It can be annoying, because I might end up waking you up, especially if I say things out loud or try to open the door. That’s what the bells are for, by the way. I hate that thing too, believe me, but since I hate it it wakes me up most times I try to leave. I really need it.”

Now Jongdae was clearly rambling. Chanyeol wondered how many other students didn’t even let him finish and decided to turn away and choose another room. If he was in the position to choose, Chanyeol would probably leave as well. But he would be nice about it, which is clearly not something Jongdae has experienced with the previous rejections, if he keeps reassuring Chanyeol that he would understand if he preferred iguanas over having his sleep interrupted every night by sleepwalking shenanigans. 

Since he didn’t answer, too caught studying the way Jongdae’s lips curled in the corners when he smiled shyly, Jongdae cleared his throat. “Uhm. It’s okay if you don’t feel like putting up with bells in the middle of the night and whatever the hell my subconscious decides.”

Chanyeol had been in the presence of this guy for less than five minutes and his own subconscious had already decided he would put up with whatever necessary, as long as Jongdae was involved.

He sat down on the edge of the other bed, bouncing a little to test the mattress. It wasn’t bad. The window between their beds was big, and even though it might get noisy during the weekend because it was above the sidewalk that led back to campus and lots of students might think it was the perfect spot to drunkenly collapse, there were a lot of nice trees lining on the street and Chanyeol saw a lot of green. 

There was plenty of space between his and Jongdae’s bed. The en-suite was not claustrophobic like the one he had to share with Sehun as a freshman. It was true that they were both gifted with exceptional height, but they could barely stand one next to the other while brushing their teeth. 

Not that he’d have that specific issue with Jongdae; he was tiny. Very tiny.

And if Jongdae turned out to be a psychopath, Chanyeol thought that at least he had the advantage of the size. Or he could always find shelter under Baekhyun’s bed on the floor below.

Jongdae looked at him nervously. “What do you think?”

Chanyeol nodded. “I think we will manage just fine.”

The other relaxed visibly, his eyes crinkling as he smiled. Chanyeol considered taking his sunglasses out of his bag and wearing them.

He smiled back. “Aside from the sleepwalking part, anything else about you I should know?” 

_Are you single?_

Jongdae laughed, and walked to his own suitcase with a happy bounce in his step. It was smaller than Chanyeol’s, since he had probably left his stuff there from the previous year. “I’m in senior year, my major is Architecture and my minor is Art History,” he said happily, continuing to line books on the shelves above his bed.

Chanyeol dragged his things inside and closed the door, waiting for the annoying cluster of bells to stop hurting his ears before answering. He observed Jongdae’s half of the room; it looked neat. “I’m a senior too, and my major is in Computer Engineering Technology.”

Jongdae looked pretty impressed. “Woah. Maybe sharing a room will infuse some of that knowledge into me. I am absolutely helpless when it comes to computer stuff.”

“Doesn’t Architecture require some design software?”

“It does. I struggled a lot to get through those exams. I mean, _a lot._ Thank God I left that stuff behind last year.”

Chanyeol almost felt sad. He wouldn’t have minded sitting close to Jongdae, showing him things on a screen, using the excuse of pointing at stuff to lean in his direction.

“But I’ll still need those to work, so I really count on your infused knowledge.”

Sadness cancelled.

“I could help you. No problem.”

“What about your minor?” Jongdae asked after offering another big smile.

“Uhm. It’s Music,” Chanyeol answered shyly, patting on his guitar case. 

Jongdae looked even more impressed. He sat down, his hands folded under his knees. “That’s so awesome!”

Chanyeol could feel himself blush. He hoped his ears weren’t doing that stupid thing where they became all red because they were—well, very visible when they did that.

“It’s nothing special.”

“Dude, why do you say that? Oh, isn’t it funny how we’re both pursuing something really technical in our major and then delving into arts with our minor? This is so great. So you can play the guitar?”

“Yeah. I promise not to play it too often, or when you’re around. It can get annoying.”

Jongdae straight up cackled at that. “More annoying than me bolting out stadium choruses in the middle of the night? We’ll see about that,” he chuckled, and then he stood up again. 

Chanyeol imitated him and started slowly unpacking his things.

So far, so good.

-

Jongdae asked him whether he wanted to go grab lunch together at the canteen and Chanyeol found himself agreeing before he could even think about it. He had the presence of mind to ask about the person Jongdae had been expecting when he got to their room, and Jongdae sighed. 

“Junmyeon, my best friend, said he’d come to say goodbye. We’ve been roommates since freshman year and he’s the only person I know who tolerates me and my somnambulism, my family aside.”

“Why did he change his room?”

“He didn’t. He got accepted for a scholarship in LA, he’ll be away for nine months. He’s supposed to leave in two days. I’ll see him later.” Jongdae sent Chanyeol a sideway glance. “I really hope you’re tidier than him.”

There was something. The way Jongdae treated him with such friendliness. The part of Chanyeol that was silently gloating because his new roommate was so cute contrasted with the one that suggested that he shouldn’t befriend him so quickly, just in case he was a weird guy or someone Chanyeol wouldn’t want to have around for some reason.

He would have literally cried a little if he found out that behind such a gorgeous face and friendly manners hid another Komodo dragon tamer or something. 

The walk to the canteen was uneventful, though Jongdae was definitely the one who kept the conversation going. Chanyeol had forgotten basically anything unrelated to Jongdae and their room, including Baekhyun, when Baekhyun himself appeared from behind a corner and went straight to punch Chanyeol’s chest. “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

Chanyeol massaged the offended area. “I left it in my room to charge. Did you already have lunch?”

“Yes, my roommate and I parted ways dramatically after we ate our yogurts. Wait, did you say ‘your room’? Did you find one or will you crash illegally in my bunk for the entire semester?”

Chanyeol looked around, to Jongdae who was politely pretending to be absorbed with his phone behind him. “Baek, uhm, this is Jongdae, my roommate.”

Baekhyun raised a hand to lift his bangs out of his face, squinted, then let them flop down. When Jongdae stepped forward to shake his hand with a smile, Baekhyun almost reeled backwards. 

Relatable.

They introduced themselves with that friendliness that characterised both of them, and before Baekhyun could embarrass Chanyeol with a comment (Chanyeol could tell from experience the exact moment his best friend opened his mouth to do so), someone greeted Jongdae from the tray queue and Jongdae excused himself to chat with his classmates.

“Park Chanyeol,” Baekhyun hissed as soon as Jongdae was outside of hearing range. “You motherfucker.”

Chanyeol had a hard time peeling his gaze from Jongdae’s back. “What?”

Baekhyun snorted, but didn’t elaborate. “Go have lunch. See you tomorrow in class, I have my own hot roommate to pursue.” He patted Chanyeol’s arm, laughing at something to himself. 

“What?”

Baekhyun waved over his shoulder as he walked away, a bounce in his step.

Chanyeol turned around, almost tripping over Jongdae and being slapped in the face with the tray his roommate was offering to him. 

“I’m so sorry!” Jongdae shrieked.

Chanyeol lowered the tray massaging his nose, but he smiled. “No worries, dude.”

“Sorry, really. Here, I got you a tray. Let’s get in line.”

And for the rest of lunchtime Chanyeol had a very hard time trying to remind himself to eat something instead of simply staring at the boy sitting in front of him. Even harder, trying not to send the food he managed to scoop up down the wrong windpipe, because Jongdae kept doing unthinkable things such as bursting out laughing, loud and carefree, in a way that made his eyes twinkle. Or licking the yogurt from the corners of his lips, and he had really cute lips, curling at the corners. Or jerking his head to move his bangs from his face, his hair shiny and soft-looking even under the unflattering neons of the canteen, and Chanyeol could see Jongdae’s eyebrows bouncing and tilting with every emotion, especially when he started complaining loudly about his schedule for the semester.

Before lunch was over, Chanyeol had started hoping that Jongdae’s case of somnambulism would be so bad that it would put out any chances of Jongdae’s status developing from cute hot roommate to desperate crush. Because if Jongdae kept acting like this all the time around him, he was seriously going to get in the way of Chanyeol’s graduation.

It took Chanyeol the time it took Jongdae to eat his whole lunch, dessert included, to get halfway through his own bowl of noodles. If his efficiency in such mundane tasks was hindered by approximately 400% just by Jongdae’s presence, he couldn’t imagine how long it would take him to write his thesis while being in the same room as Jongdae.

He shivered in horror.

He would have to start visiting the library a lot.

Maybe Jongdae would quickly lose interest in him, and all this friendliness would fade away once he considered the “get to know your roommate” duty done. 

Maybe Jongdae wanted to play nice to make sure the other wouldn’t be reluctant if he ever needed help in the middle of the night, or with computer stuff.

Maybe Jongdae was trying to assess him, as scared as Chanyeol that he was going to have to share his room with a psychopath. 

If that was the case, Chanyeol knew he was not making a good impression, since in the span of the one hour they spent together he kept catching himself staring with his spoon suspended mid-air between the plate and his open mouth. 

However he probably gained a lot of bonus points when he saved Jongdae from himself in a dozen different ways. 

Chanyeol could proudly affirm he was the cause behind Jongdae’s clean clothes, since he was the one who caught his tray before he could spill its contents on himself. He was also the reason why Jongdae was not in the hospital with a concussion, because Chanyeol rushed to close the window before Jongdae, who had crouched under it collecting some papers that had fallen from his desk, could smash his head on its edge. He also was swift enough to pick up his guitar from the floor before Jongdae could trip on it, even though it definitely was not a small obstacle someone could not see. Before another catastrophe could take place in their room, Chanyeol offered to put Jongdae’s suitcases over the closet himself.

While Chanyeol found it concerning that someone would be such a danger to himself both awake and asleep, Jongdae simply laughed it off confidently every single time.

Also concerning: it was not normal that Chanyeol would still find him hot even when he tripped over himself. The levels of whippedness were starting to be truly alarming.

Jongdae left their room in the early afternoon, saying he had to meet with his ex-roommate to bid him goodbye. Before the door even closed completely behind him, Chanyeol had already started suspecting the other was just finding excuses to spend as much time away from him as possible because he was straight and had realised Chanyeol was pretty much lost into gay panic ever since he stepped in and he found him too awkward or possibly hated him.

Since Jongdae still wasn't back by 10 p.m., Chanyeol had pretty much convinced himself that was the case. 

_[10:05 p.m.] Loey: :(_

_[10:05 p.m.] Baekhyunee: i don’t like that_ _  
_ _[10:05 p.m.] Baekhyunee: i’m coming over_

_[10:06 p.m.] Loey: you don’t know my room number_

_[10:06 p.m.] Baekhyunee: fuck_ _  
_ _[10:06 p.m.] Baekhyunee: well you could tell me your room number_ _  
_ _[10:08 p.m.] Baekhyunee: I have snacks and I can tell your gay panic has worsened_ _  
_ _[10:09 p.m.] Baekhyunee: I’m already in the elevator Park Chanyeol_

Chanyeol was about to answer when Jongdae came back, all smiles and polite questions such as “did you eat, Chanyeol?” or “I see you haven’t finished unpacking, do you need me to help you tomorrow?” and “I’m sorry it’s kinda late, were you waiting for me to go to sleep? Do you have class early tomorrow?”

Chanyeol couldn’t help smiling back. “It’s okay, I have class at 10 tomorrow.”

“Still, I should have told you I was coming back a little late. I meant to text you but I realised I don't have your number.”

“We could swap numbers now, if you want.” Chanyeol almost patted himself on the back to congratulate himself for the casual indifference of his tone. It was not an easy feat.

Jongdae immediately handed his phone over. Chanyeol had barely the time to make Baekhyun’s texts disappear before he did the same. And it was stupid, really, to be excited about a phone number when they were going to sleep in the same room every night, but Chanyeol was _very_ excited. 

But that brought out other thoughts. 

“Uhm, Jongdae? I don’t want to sound like I have... morbid curiosity or anything, I just feel like I should know? So I don’t accidentally—upset you? What should I do if you... you know?”

Jongdae came out of the en-suite, brows furrowed and his toothbrush hanging from his mouth. He raised one finger to tell him to wait a second, and when he came back he looked a little flustered. He dried his face with his towel. “Well, as I told you before, it doesn’t happen every night. It’s usually when I’m in a new environment, or stressed, or sick, or if I haven’t slept enough the previous nights. And I don’t always try to go out or do weird or dangerous things, so you can rest assured. But I can’t predict when it will happen and I mostly do not remember anything . When I do, I can’t tell whether it was a dream or whether I actually did what I did.”

Chanyeol nodded and sat up straighter to show he was paying attention.

“If you—oh, God, this is so embarrassing. I never had this conversation with a stranger before.” Jongdae rubbed his forehead. “If you—if you see me staring at you, for example, don’t be scared, I’m not actually watching you. I have my eyes open because it’s a state of low consciousness, but that’s it. I am not actually seeing anything and if I see anything I don’t remember it. Please, _please,_ whatever I do, I’m not doing it on purpose.”

Feeling how the other was struggling, Chanyeol hastened to reassure him. “I’m sure it will be okay. Anything else I should or should not do?”

Jongdae relaxed. “Yes. Well. If I wake you up, do _not_ try to wake _me_ up. Just try to persuade me to go back to bed and eventually I will follow you, I promise. A part of me hears you. My parents and Junmyeon always told me that I’m a clumsy but agreeable sleepwalker,” he chuckled. “As long as you don’t try to force me physically or you don’t raise your voice.”

“What happens if you wake up?”

Jongdae grimaced. “Nothing really happens? It’s just very confusing and upsetting,” he concluded, lowering his gaze. “I might get defensive and rash and flap my hands or scream at you, so it’s in both our best interests that you don’t wake me up. If you don’t have a choice, just stand back and clap your hands or drop something or shout, anything loud might work. Like the bells.”

Chanyeol nodded. He turned all the information in his mind for a little, then winced. “Man, it must really suck. I’m so sorry.”

The surprise on Jongdae’s face was lovely. “Oh. It’s not bad, really. I have a mild case. Don’t worry.”

“But it must be so stressful. You can’t go to sleep without fearing you might wake up somewhere else. Is there no way to get rid of it?”

“Nope. I mean, the ones who have it bad use hypnosis, but I don’t need that. It runs in the family, my grandma had it, so my parents knew chances were high it was either me or my brother and they were ready when it happened the first time.”

“So your kids or grandkids could have it too?”

Jongdae winced a little. “My—yeah. Technically.”

Chanyeol felt horrible for whatever negative judgement he might have had for Jongdae’s sleep disorders. It was so clear that the guy didn’t enjoy it, even though he learned to live with it.

“Anything else?” he asked.

Jongdae huffed and looked around, his hands on his hips. “No. I don’t think so. It’s really late now, but if you have more questions my ex-roommate agreed to give you his number. I can only tell you how it is from my side, I can only be so useful, but he handled me a lot in the past so maybe text him, if you’d like.”

Two minutes later, Chanyeol had two new contacts in his phone under the names of “Kim Junmyeon - Jongdae’s best friend” and “Kim Jongdeok - Jongdae’s brother”.

“Do you seriously expect me to contact people behind your back?”

Jongdae snorted. “Chanyeol. You agreed to be my roommate. I suppose you earned the right to ask questions to the people who can give you the best answers. I want you to be comfortable with this.”

“I am comfortable! I just want _you_ to be comfortable.”

Jongdae didn’t answer and for a second Chanyeol worried about not making sense, but then he noticed that the other had blushed a little.

Chanyeol tried to pretend he was very busy on his phone to avoid looking at Jongdae while he changed into his PJs.

“Good night, roommate,” Jongdae chirped once he was under the covers, and turned off the light over his bed. After a minute, giving his back to him, he added a soft “thank you.”

Chanyeol stammered out a “no problem,” and hurried to get into bed and turn off his own light.

His phone blinked with several unread messages, the last of which was

_[11:13 p.m.] Baekhyunee: I’m still waiting in the lobby, you asshole_

-

“So,” Baekhyun mumbled around the pen he was chewing, “Why did you make me wait 45 minutes in the lobby? Which one of you two got dicked down?”

Chanyeol sputtered, tapped the wrong key on his laptop, got the code wrong, and had to restart the whole process. “Baek! None of us—Jesus, I don’t even know whether he’s gay.”

Baekhyun didn’t lift his gaze from his own screen until his own laptop did a small _ping_ and the codes turned green. “Then what were you ‘talking’ about for half an hour?”

Chanyeol sighed. “About his parasomnia.”

“What’s that? Is that some other kind of illegally imported pet reptile?”

“No.”

“Then speak a language I know.”

“He’s a sleep-walker.”

The pen fell from Baekhyun’s mouth. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I knew he must have a flaw, hidden somewhere. He’s too hot.”

“You—” Chanyeol stopped before he could fully formulate the protest, because: “Ugh, I know, right?”

“Did he sleepwalk last night?”

“He got up around 1 a.m., while I was googling sleep disorders. He walked to the bathroom, closed the door, and one second later he went back and laid down. He was mumbling something about spiders the whole time and then it was over. Nothing exciting.”

Baekhyun’s laptop made another sound, and Baekhyun hurried to take the pen out of his mouth again to scribble something on his notebook next to it. “I don’t know what I was expecting, and I can’t decide whether it’s creepy or funny.”

“I thought so too, but Jongdae looked so uncomfortable when he was explaining it to me. It’s probably not easy, given all the prejudice and all that. So he talks in his sleep, so what? You talk in your sleep too, and I am not going to treat any of you differently.”

“I don’t talk in my sleep.”

“Yeah, right, you whine and moan and gurgle and that is far creepier than an articulated speech about how disgusting spiders are.”

Baekhyun hummed. Chanyeol focused on his coding, until his screen turned green too. “Does your roommate have flaws?”

“Yes, he’s a morally compromised, degenerate individual.” 

“Let me guess, he doesn’t like League of Legends.”

“Worse. He doesn’t like gaming.”

“Ouch, that must be tough on you.”

“Hey, nerds.” Someone sat next to Chanyeol, jostling him and making him miss the last portion of his coding, so he had to start over _again._

“Sehun, literally, fuck you.”

“Fuck you too, Yeol, this is the first thing you say to me in two weeks.”

“Not true. We saw each other yesterday. Pretty sure I talked to you then.”

“Oh, you did. You enunciated something elevated, like, if I recall correctly, ‘thou shalt fuck yourself and fuck thine spaghetti arms’.”

Baekhyun sipped loudly on his drink. “Yeah, well, I recall you throwing his suitcase down one flight of stairs, almost murdering me in the process. So it was to be expected. Did Jongin arrive?”

“Yesterday. Took the train in the evening and arrived here at fuck o’clock in the morning, showered and went to class. I’ve done that once last year; terrible experience, don’t recommend. But yeah, I literally haven’t seen him yet. Already doing homework?” Sehun asks, peering at the other two, hunched over their laptops at the cafeteria. 

“Yeah. I could tell from the moment she walked in that our Software Development 4 professor was going to be a bitch,” Chanyeol gritted out. “What about your homework?”

Baekhyun snorted. “Have you ever _seen_ Sehun doing homework?”

Sehun chuckled. “I’ll go get something else at the bar for you two if you talk shit about your new roommates with me so I can feel better about my own who I still haven’t seen.”

“Granted,” Baekhyun immediately agreed, and Sehun got up and walked away.

But the roommate shit-talking was obviously postponed when Baekhyun elbowed Chanyeol, making him lose his code _again._ “Dude! I didn’t know our roommates knew each other!”

Chanyeol watched the two boys queuing behind Sehun at the bar. Jongdae was chatting with another boy of his height, a hot guy with short hair and the look of someone not up for anyone’s bullshit. Baekhyun’s roommate.

“What’s your roommate’s major?”

“Architecture.”

“Oh, they’re classmates then.”

“What a coincidence. Yeol, your hot roommate is waving at you, please respond,” Baekhyun started waving on his own.

Chanyeol kept his eyes on his laptop. “Baek, do you seriously want them to meet Sehun?”

“Fuck, I didn’t think about that. Well, too late, they saw us.”

“I heard that,” Sehun grumbled, threatening to spill Chanyeol’s coffee all over his keyboard.

There was a lot of shrieking and slapping and Sehun jabbing random keys on Chanyeol’s keyboard. By the time Chanyeol could survey the damages (only a lost encryption), Jongdae and Kyungsoo were already sitting at their table.

“Kyungsoo, Jongdae, this is our high school friend Sehun,” Baekhyun was introducing, “He looks harmless, but he’s actually evil.”

“Not so evil that you’re not his friends,” Jongdae pointed out with a quiet smile.

“Not a day goes by without us wondering why that is,” Chanyeol grumbled, and Sehun slinged an arm over his shoulders, his features the portrait of everything pure and angelic.

“Because it would be much worse to have me as a nemesis,” he peacefully responds. “So. You’re the roommates? Which one of you rooms with this lamppost?” he continued shrugging Chanyeol on his seat.

Jongdae raised his hand.

“Oh, great. I roomed with him in freshman year, what do you want to know? I can tell you where he stores his chocolate bars and his condoms if you ever need any. Both things very big and long.”

“I’m sure Jongdae is fine, thank you, Sehun,” Chanyeol gritted out. 

“And you,” Sehun continued looking at Kyungsoo. “Don’t look so disappointed. I’ve had sleepovers with Baekhyun since the first day of high school, so I have enough knowledge of his patterns if you need me to spill.”

Baekhyun closed his eyes. “I told you he’s evil.”

Sehun ignored him. “If Baekhyun actually uses his closet space and does something with his clothes that is not making a ball and throwing it on the first available surface off the ground, it means he’s trying really hard to impress you. And if—”

“Hey Sehun, look, Jongin just walked past the door,” Chanyeol said, resignation in his voice.

Sehun perked up as if someone pinched his butt. “Really? Got to go, then. You two, nice shorties, hit me up if you want to grab lunch and plot pranks against these two nerds,” he said quickly, grabbing his things, eyes trained on the door. “See you later.”

He then proceeded to evaporate the fuck out of the cafeteria. Chanyeol decided that hiding behind his hands, hidden behind his laptop screen in turn, might be good for now. 

“You didn’t actually see Jongin, did you.” Baekhyun mumbled.

“No.”

“Nice trick.”

They fist-bumped each other, dispirited.

“I don’t know what just happened and why you would look so embarrassed, so I’m getting the fuck out of here because I have to meet one of our classmates for a project.” Kyungsoo stood up. “If it makes you feel any better, I am literally never grabbing lunch with your friend—what was his name?”

“We try not to say it out loud. It conjures the spawn of Satan himself,” Chanyeol groaned. 

“See you later, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun exhaled.

Kyungsoo disappeared after a brief, amused smile. 

Chanyeol turned to Baekhyun. “You have actually started to fold your clothes, then?”

Baekhyun pulled his hair.

Jongdae cleared his throat. “What would make it better? Me reassuring you that I will never try to steal your chocolate stash, or do I have to get the fuck out as well?”

“Is ‘erasing the last ten minutes from your memory’ an option?” Chanyeol asked.

“For the record, I’m not trying really hard to impress anyone,” Baekhyun pointed out. 

Jongdae erupted in an angelic smile of his own. He glanced at Kyungsoo’s retreating back, then did a once over of Baekhyun. “Sure.”

Baekhyun groaned. “I gotta go.”

“No, you don’t,” Chanyeol grabbed his sleeve. 

“Yes, I do. I have to, uh, I forgot I promised to video call my mom. Bye.”

Jongdae demonstrated incredible tact by deciding to ignore Sehun’s interventions, or maybe simply showcasing his total indifference to the matter. He started chatting about how weird it was that they had never met each other before, and then the conversation shifted towards homework and random classmates.

But Chanyeol soon realised that something else bothered Jongdae, which was why anything Sehun might have said was irrelevant compared to his own embarrassment.

“Chanyeol, hey, uhm. Did I—do anything, last night?” he asked as they walked together back to their room.

Chanyeol coughed. “No? I don’t think so,” he plays for time. “If you did, I didn’t hear anything.”

“Oh,” Jongdae’s relief looked so fresh that Chanyeol congratulated himself for the small lie, because it obviously put Jongdae a lot more at ease. “Okay. Shit, man, I was so scared maybe I did something creepy.”

“You didn’t.” It wasn’t a lie, but Chanyeol kept looking in front of himself to avoid giving himself away. “Stop worrying so much, really.”

There was a short stretch of silence. They reached the dorm doors, and right when Chanyeol grabbed the handle and pulled, Jongdae decided to chuckle to himself (the sound alone made Chanyeol want to levitate a little off the ground) and say: “You’re so nice, Chanyeol.”

Chanyeol’s shock management, being poor as always, made it so that he promptly released the door and almost crushed Jongdae who was in the process of crossing the threshold. 

Jongdae’s guardian angel was probably very vigilant during those tense two seconds in which Chanyeol’s hands tried to grab the heavy door again, because in the end he managed to not transform cute roommate into cute omelette. 

That guardian angel probably agreed that all Chanyeol’s efforts at keeping Jongdae alive the previous day deserved remuneration.

The state of ease between them, sleepwalking and Sehun put aside definitively, made for a pleasant afternoon spent chatting as they both finished unpacking their things, tidied up, and exchanged comments over their respective homework. Chanyeol’s ego felt a little pleasant boost when Jongdae was profuse with _oohs_ and _woahs_ upon spying on Chanyeol’s coding programs, while Chanyeol had to give him props when Jongdae showed him pictures of the scale models he had created as the final project of the previous year. 

Chanyeol’s favourite part of the evening was when Jongdae asked him to play something on the guitar and hummed along to the most popular songs Chanyeol chose to play.

But the discomfort was back, twice as powerful and especially on Jongdae’s side, the following morning, because of what had happened at fuck o’clock in the morning, to quote Sehun, at 3:54 a.m. to be precise. 

Chanyeol heard the bells.

His annoyance was profound. In the two seconds it took him to abandon the nice dream he was having, he only managed to curse all hippie household gadgets of the land once, before alarm settled in his brain.

He was sitting up before he could pinpoint exactly what was wrong, beside the fact that being awake at that time in the morning should have been biologically impossible. 

But Chanyeol turned the light on to look at his wristwatch on the nightstand, and he noticed immediately that Jongdae was not in his bed. 

He blinked in the dimness of the greenish exit lights of the hallway. The whole building was enveloped in silence. It was too late even for the students who never cared whether it was a weekday right at the beginning of the semester; even if anyone wanted to party they would have passed out by that time. 

Only the soft sound of Jongdae’s bare feet on the linoleum could be heard, on his right, and Chanyeol rushed in his direction, trying not to be too noisy. 

He had no clue about how to proceed, but he remembered the keywords: gentle, persuade, back to bed. Do not awaken.

It was indeed a little creepy, that Jongdae was walking so slowly with his eyes half open while mumbling something under his breath in the spectral light of the night, but once Chanyeol stopped in front of him the impression lasted very few instants. Because then Jongdae closed his eyes and his mouth, and his face was framed by beautiful, messy locks of black hair, and his lips were a little pouty. 

_Okay, Chanyeol, you can do this._

“Uhm, Jongdae?”

Jongdae blinked a little, seeing him but not really looking at him, and proceeded to walk around him to reach the staircase.

Stairs did not sound very safe for someone whose eyes were half closed. 

Chanyeol managed to get between him and the stairs before Jongdae could walk into the corner face first. That meant that Jongdae walked into him, which in other occasions Chanyeol would have appreciated since Jongdae’s face was just the perfect height to be squished nicely on his shoulder, except that he was freaking out. 

“Jongdae, what do you think about... going back to bed? Yeah?”

Jongdae mumbled something, sleepily, and turned around. He did a whole turn and then faced Chanyeol again. 

“Aren’t you hungry?” Jongdae asked, articulating well.

“Yeah, man, I’m starving. I have some great snacks back in our room. Big chocolate bars. We can share.”

“Our room?”

“Yeah. I’m your roommate. And we’re going back to our room,” Chanyeol was surprised his voice didn’t sound as strangled as he felt.

Sure, Jongdae looked sleepy. He looked the same degree of careless devastation that Baekhyun sometimes reached when he pulled two all-nighters in a row in the desperate attempt at cramming the work of a 25 hours worthy traineeship into a single paper that was due three days ago but he somehow got an extension. 

So this is a mental comparison that Chanyeol could use to calm himself down and remind himself that this was about sleep, and it was not like Jongdae was possessed or anything—Chanyeol _really_ shouldn’t have watched that horror movie two weeks ago, but Jongin _loved_ horror movies and they were in his home so he had control over the remote.

The thing was, Jongdae also looked weirdly lucid and sharp. Chanyeol couldn’t explain it, but he felt like Jongdae was more awake than his body let on. Or vice versa. He really had no idea. But he was terrified that Jongdae would suddenly bolt down the stairs.

So he tried, as gently as possible, to put one arm around Jongdae’s shoulders to herd him back to their room. “What do you think about those snacks, then?”

Jongdae said something unintelligible and leaned against him. “You’re so nice...”

If Chanyeol wasn’t on guardian duty, he would have laid down on the floor to press his flushing face onto the cool linoleum. It was comforting that at least both Awake Jongdae and Asleep Jongdae thought that. He felt weirdly flattered.

“... Minseok.”

Chanyeol could see in front of his eyes the crumbling structures of his own delusion. 

He kept lightly pulling him to their room, touching him but not really touching him because he didn’t want to wake him up. “Here we go.”

“What about class?”

“We’re going to eat and then we’re going to sleep because class is in a few hours, Jongdae.”

“Right.”

Well. He had said he was very agreeable and easy to manage. 

Chanyeol made sure to close the door again, extending one arm up to still the bells before they could wake up half of the building and thanking the fact that Jongdae was too short to ever attempt to do that and escape without being noticed.

When he turned around, Jongdae was taking his shirt off.

“Jongdae, what are you doing?”

“The sun... it’s really warm.”

Chanyeol could only agree, but he was almost entirely sure he was warm because of the way he was blushing. Before he could say anything, Jongdae hung the shirt on the door of his closet and cautiously circumnavigated the bed to lay down hugging his pillow.

Chanyeol didn’t dare to move. 

“Jongdae?” he whispered after a while. 

He walked closer, inspected his roommate carefully, but the other’s eyes were thankfully now closed and his breaths were even.

“Oh. You’re sleeping. You’re sleeping, right? Well, you were sleeping before, too. You’ve never stopped sleeping. I think? So, no snacks?”

No answer.

Chanyeol sighed in relief, his hands on his hips and his face to the ceiling. It was not that hard. He could do it again. He could lead Jongdae back to bed if it happened again. 

He inhaled deeply.

“Merry Christmas,” Jongdae suddenly said. 

Chanyeol stumbled backwards and landed on his butt. 

But since at 4:36 a.m. Jongdae hadn’t said anything else and hadn’t even moved, Chanyeol convinced himself he wouldn’t try to escape again and finally got up from the floor and fell into his own bed to get some more sleep. 

-

Chanyeol was not the only one who looked tired and a little cranky in the morning.

When his alarm went off, he opened his eyes to see that Jongdae was already sitting up on his own bed, looking at the floor darkly from under tousled bangs. 

“Did I sleepwalk?” he asked, his voice a lot lower than usual. Also lower than usual: Chanyeol’s ability to contain his squeaks at the sound. Especially because it was accompanied by the vision of a shirtless Jongdae.

He glanced at the door. “You—well.” 

Jongdae wiggled his toes on the floor and checked his shorts, before he looked around and caught his own shirt hanging on the closet. “I totally did, didn’t I.”

“Yeah.”

“How far did I go?”

“You turned around before the staircase.”

“Sorry to wake you up,” Jongdae said quietly.

Chanyeol grinned and shrugged reassuringly. “Don’t apologise. It was not a problem.”

Jongdae snorted. “Whatever you say. Man, I really have to pee so I’ll go to the bathroom first. Hope you’re not running late.”

Just the fact that the room had an en-suite, therefore Chanyeol wouldn’t be forced to wobble around in the corridors balancing towels and toiletry bags in his arms whenever he wanted to go take a shower, gave about a million points to the room. 

Chanyeol might be very gay, but that didn’t mean he enjoyed the way some boys tended to consider common bathrooms as the ring in which to showcase all of their assets because apparently otherwise college life itself would have challenged their masculinity. And he didn’t like the distrustful looks some of them gave him, once it was out in the open that he was gay. Baekhyun was the type to use blowjobs as threats, and it was incredible how effective they were when it came to stopping someone from muttering homophobic shit, but Chanyeol was not that kind of person.

That was why so far he was really grateful that things with Jongdae didn't seem to be awkward at least under that point of view. Sharing a bathroom entails a certain level of intimacy. But Jongdae was very natural around him, wasn’t bothered by intimacy but didn’t flaunt around his lack of shame. It was just the right amount.

It was all the right amount of anything, really. 

It was just right.

Jongdae was chuckling to himself as he inspected his discarded shirt before folding it and putting it under his pillow. Chanyeol had to hide his own smile in the bathroom.

It was just right.

-

It was not particularly awkward between them in the following days, thanks to various factors. 

First of all, Sehun was out of sight. While Chanyeol had bluffed about Jongin’s presence outside of the cafeteria and had totally pulled that trick out of his ass to get rid of him, expecting payback later, luck had been on his side. Though Jongin hadn't been exactly where Chanyeol had wished he would be, Jongin had been around on campus and Sehun had managed to see him with his own eyes therefore hadn’t doubted Chanyeol’s sincerity.

A Sehun too busy pining over Jongin meant a Sehun too busy dealing with his full homo feelings towards their friend to even remember other people in his world existed (and were clearly having full homo feelings as well), so Chanyeol could breathe. 

Second of all, Baekhyun was, as Sehun had unintentionally predicted, trying _really_ hard to impress Kyungsoo. It meant a lot less idiotic antics and a lot more sensible talks, and he was surprisingly tolerable to be around. And yes, he folded his clothes. Though unfortunately Chanyeol was no longer the roommate benefitting from that.

That Baekhyun and Chanyeol were joined at the hip was a given. But how Baekhyun managed to force Kyungsoo to be around them all the time was a mystery, since his poor roommate hadn’t seemed particularly interested at first. But Chanyeol didn’t complain, because Kyungsoo was very close to Jongdae and they often ended up having lunch together, or having dinner together, they even went to the movies or to some party a couple times, the four of them, and they volunteered to instruct the Architects on how to be decent at gaming, and they liked to listen to Chanyeol play the guitar, and everything was so nice all the time and Chanyeol wondered since when was college so fun.

Kyungsoo was probably the most pleasant company Chanyeol had ever met. While he was not even remotely talkative or energetic as the other three, he made sure to always say the right thing at the right time, whether it was a warm word of encouragement or the most hilarious bullshit. It was lovely to see his face break into a heart-shaped smile in the middle of all the handsome lines of his face. It was easy to see why Jongdae liked his friend so much, and why Baekhyun had decided to try to pursue him approximately 0.2 seconds after they were introduced as roommates. 

It was also easy to see why Jongdae fit with Chanyeol and Baekhyun as if he was born to be there. His easy laughter, his banter, his readiness to agree to whatever stupid plan they had, his constant offers to help with anything, his perpetual smile, and his own efforts to make Kyungsoo fall for Baekhyun. 

His obliviousness, when it came to Chanyeol wishing something like that would happen between them, too.

A few weeks went by and Chanyeol was starting to feel more and more at ease around Jongdae. Not because his soul was any less shattered by the stellar intensity of Jongdae’s smile, all lips curling and uncurling, Adam’s apple bounces, and slightly crooked, perfect teeth, but because he at least got used to having that smile around day and night. 

And there was also the thing: Jongdae’s nocturnal adventures and Chanyeol’s equally nocturnal endeavours.

In his defense, Jongdae didn’t try to leave the room again. Well, he tried once, but the bell woke him up and Chanyeol had to nurse his very cute and very confused roommate back to his bed because the sleepwalker kept shaking his head and grumbling interrogations to himself when he woke up with one hand around the door handle. 

There were also many nights of nothing noteworthy, or at least nothing Chanyeol’s overdeveloped auricles could catch. Blissful nights of eight full hours of uninterrupted sleep; something not all college students could brag they achieved on a regular basis, much less college students who shared a room with a somnambulist.

And there were nights in which Chanyeol simply laid there, staring at the ceiling of his perfect dorm room, replaying the extremely nice things Jongdae had told him that day, complimenting his guitarist skills, or his good mark on a project. Lecturing himself, basically, because he knew he shouldn’t misinterpret any of that as anything more than the huge and disarming kindness that Jongdae seemed to have been born with, like a literal celestial angel trapped in a merely mortal body (a still very cute body, though). He was so kind and selfless that sometimes Chanyeol literally didn’t know how to act around him.

And he was so cute and hot Chanyeol never knew what to do about himself (and about his morning wood). Once he got over the amazement of the first days, he managed to come to terms with the realisation that yes, Jongdae was extremely good-looking and exactly Chanyeol’s type. Once he owned this knowledge, he could at least pretend it didn’t affect him. Key word: pretend. He still had bouts of gay panic that either ended with himself staring into nothingness as he strummed his guitar trying to compose songs about the sparkling light that resided in the depths of Jongdae’s eyes, or with his self-control being way too excellent whenever he had to catch Jongdae before he could meet the floor up close and something prevented Chanyeol from taking advantage of the sudden proximity to kiss him or something, accidentally, of course. 

Chanyeol had thought that embarrassment and long, clumsy limbs were never a good combination, but apparently short limbs were also a qualification to be a disaster, if Jongdae was anything to go by.

And while Chanyeol was kept awake by those daily (nightly?) contemplations, wiggling his feet out of the bed because he was taller than the damn mattress, Jongdae usually entered his NREM phase and did something ridiculous. 

Once he got up and started taking all his books from the desk to construct a pile, muttering something about the leaning tower of Pisa. 

The following day he sat on the edge of Chanyeol’s bed (which had made Chanyeol gasp and hide under the blankets until only his bulging eyes were exposed to such sudden intimacy) and started a very serious and very awake-sounding conversation about one of his projects for the class, and started asking Chanyeol’s opinion about the materials he should have employed to build the vaulted ceiling of the swimming pool he wanted to design. Then, in the middle of the unrequited architecture lecture, he got up, declared that he wanted the walls to be painted green, and went back to bed on his own.

Another time, Chanyeol woke up in the morning only to find Jongdae sleeping on the floor. A few days after that, he woke up early enough to find that Jongdae was completely naked, lying on his front. Both times he dragged a blanket over his frame, trying not to stare. Partially failing.

A couple of times Jongdae got up around 2 a.m. to shower, which was scary and not something Chanyeol approved of because he was scared that Jongdae would slip and hit his head. After the second time it happened, Chanyeol went to the mall after class to purchase not one but two bathmats with suckers to place at the bottom of the shower. Jongdae had asked him why, and seemed almost moved by Chanyeol’s totally not awkward “so I can sleep at night without being worried you might crack your damn skull open during a sleepwalking episode, man.”

One night, following a rough day in which Jongdae apparently had a fight with his dad on the phone, Chanyeol woke up and found Jongdae sitting on the windowsill with his forehead pressed against the glass, munching on chocolate chip cookies. It was so sad that Chanyeol had wanted nothing but to hug him and tuck him into bed again, except that the way Jongdae had sighed gave away that he could have easily been awake. Chanyeol wasn’t sure they were close enough yet to allow the kind of comforting hug he had wanted to give him.

Since Baekhyun’s pursuit of Kyungsoo’s attention did not bear fruit, the only source of entertainment of his life seemed to be Chanyeol’s daily recap of Jongdae’s night adventures.

“No fucking shit,” Baekhyun shrieked, slapping his knees. “You’re shitting me!”

“I kid you not, he literally stood up, opened his closet doors, inhaled deeply and said: ‘one iced americano.’”

Baekhyun was wheezing by now. “He did not!”

“He totally did. His sweaters were not impressed.”

“And then? Did fucking Tumnus from Narnia come out and bring him some americano?”

“He stood there for a while and just as I thought maybe I should get up and tuck him into bed, he went to the bathroom and peed, with the door rigorously open, and after that he went to bed.”

Baekhyun paused, then laughed again. “Dude, it’s so anticlimactic it literally couldn’t be any more comedic.”

“You know, I’m not telling you this because I want you to laugh at him. It’s actually serious.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Baekhyun wiped his eyes. He had been laughing so hard he cried. “It’s a serious condition and he could get really hurt and stuff. I get it, trust me. And I promise to never make fun of him. But bro, one iced americano? That’s gold.”

Chanyeol thinks about how he had struggled to suffocate his laughter in the pillow, only to laugh about it openly once Jongdae had seemed the most amused of them all over breakfast the next morning, over a real americano brought to them by a real person and not by one of Jongdae’s sweaters. He had been laughing so hard at his own antics he had almost sneezed the coffee out of a nostril and choked.

“What is gold?”

“The world when you’re not in it, Oh Sehun,” Chanyeol sighed, only to lift his gaze. “Oh, hey, Jonginnie. Fancy seeing you around once in a blue moon. If we didn’t get daily Jongin sightings reports from your roommate here, we’d think you died.”

“I’m sorry, you know how rehearsals take so much of my time. I missed you guys,” Jongin greeted, sitting on Chanyeol’s lap. 

Chanyeol did not miss Sehun’s homicidal look as he retorted: “Says the one who dropped from the face of the earth. Yeol! I didn’t think you two would be those kinds of friends! You found better friends and you forgot about us.”

Jongin seemed pretty affronted. “You did what?”

“You know, Jonginnie, if you showed your handsome face around every now and then, we wouldn’t forget what it looks like.”

“As if his face was forgettable,” Sehun gritted out, personally offended.

He was unbelievable. 

Baekhyun scoffed. “Don’t look so worried, Nini, we would never drop you. Sehun though—he should be worried.”

Jongin chuckled. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

“Having lunch, Jonginnie. Eating.” Chanyeol gestured at his food. “If you and Sehun came out of your little wonderland bubble from time to time, you’d realise this is what normal people do at the canteen.”

“Yes, but why on a table so big?”

“Because we are waiting for our friends. The ones we are considering dropping Sehun for.”

Sehun snorted. “If it takes two of them to replace one of me, they must not be that special.”

“Oh no, your creepy friend is here.”

Kyungsoo sat in front of Baekhyun with a smile. 

“Looks like you’re not too scared of him having lunch with us again.”

Baekhyun opened and closed his mouth. “We’re fine as long as Jongin is here. Sehunnie knows there’s stuff we can say that Jongin must never know. If he behaves, we will behave.”

Jongin was utterly confused. “What?”

“Nothing,” Sehun fumed. 

Jongdae arrived, sitting in front of Chanyeol with his own tray and his own smile. It wavered a little as he studied the configuration of Jongin occupying Chanyeol’s legs, but it was just a split second. “Hello, everyone. Hi, Yeol. How was class?”

“It was all right. Nearly punching screens is routine, anyway. How about yours?”

“If Minseok wasn’t our classmate, we’d still be stuck with sophomore exams. I nearly fell asleep halfway through it, and Kyungsoo _definitely_ slept.”

Chanyeol laughed. “I didn’t peg you as that kind of student, Kyungsoo!”

“Oh, keep telling him that and you’ll see him implode,” Jongdae snickered, while rearranging the contents of his tray. “It messes with his sense of self to be called a dweeb.”

“You don’t look like a dweeb, Soo,” Baekhyun immediately supplied. “You don’t look like Chanyeol.”

“Hey!”

“By the way, this is Jongin. He’s our other friend and he just came back to us from wherever the hell he spent the last five eons,” Baekhyun waved a hand in Jongin’s direction.

There was another round of introductions, and by the end of it Jongin had already caught on everything. He kept shifting his gaze between Chanyeol and Jongdae. He was not a troublemaker like Sehun, but living with him probably meant few things rubbed off on him. 

So even though he slid off Chanyeol’s lap he kept sitting unnecessarily close to him and started to comb his hair with his fingers. “I love this new haircut on you, Yeol. Don’t you think it suits him a lot?” he asked the others.

Jongdae lifted his eyes from his plate and squinted at Jongin’s hands on Chanyeol’s head, at the leg he had casually thrown over Chanyeol’s. Chanyeol wondered why his haircut suddenly needed such attentive examination.

Chanyeol huffed. “It’s the same fucking haircut I’ve gotten for the past three years, Jonginnie.”

Sehun spoke with his mouth full. “It doesn’t suit him at all. Now all I can see when I look at him are his ears.”

Kyungsoo tilted his head, pensive. “Is this why Baekhyun laughs hysterically at Baby Yoda memes at 3 a.m.?”

“If those are the same memes he sends me at 3 a.m., I think you found your answer,” Chanyeol confirmed.

“But we love your ears, Yeol. In the summer we can all stand close to you to make sure their shadow will protect us from the harsh sun,” Baekhyun cooed, pulling one of them.

Jongin slapped his hand away.

“Don’t be horrible, Baek,” Jongdae chuckled. “I hadn’t even noticed them until you pointed it out.”

Which, okay. Chanyeol struggled to believe it. Which meant Jongdae had lied to make him feel better, which was—okay, he needed to stop blinking so much or else his eyelids would probably take flight.

“See?” Jongin gushed, as if he hadn’t been waiting for anything else in his life. “You look good, Yeollie.”

“Stop touching my hair, I washed it this morning.”

Jongin still looked happy about the result of his actions, and started munching happily on his lunch.

“Everyone is so nice around here, you give me diabetes,” Sehun said, disgusted.

Jongdae reached over and grabbed Sehun’s pudding from his tray. “Then, this is mine. We don’t want your sweetness levels to be anywhere above -1000. You could have a heart attack.”

“Give it back,” Sehun grabbed Jongdae’s wrist. “If my body doesn’t assimilate that sugar I can’t get through the day without murdering someone.”

They kept fighting until Jongdae knocked Chanyeol’s glass with his elbow and spilled his water. On Chanyeol, of course, because life liked to be cruel like that. 

Fighting Sehun while profusely apologising was very hard multitasking work, but Jongdae kept it up. Chanyeol wouldn’t have minded if something really bad happened, if the pudding exploded in Sehun’s face, for example, so in order not to prevent it from happening he hastened to reassure Jongdae despite being completely drenched. It was Sehun’s fault, after all. Not Jongdae’s for having never learned how to be a coordinated human. Not at all. Jongdae had no faults or flaws whatsoever.

“I don’t like pudding that much,” Jongin chirped. “Take mine, Hunnie.”

Sehun was pacified at the speed of light. 

“Damn,” Kyungsoo’s brows jumped high. He nodded at Jongin. “You have a superpower.”

“Stop worrying, Jongdae, my shirt will be dry in a minute,” Chanyeol whined, protecting himself from the shower of tissues the other was throwing at him and mostly fighting the determination with which Jongin tried to enter his personal space to pat his shirt dry with them.

Jongdae gifted Chanyeol Sehun’s pudding he had won anyway.

When Jongin finally dragged Sehun away by the elbow to dispose of their trays at the end of lunch, Kyungsoo looked very perplexed. “It’s impressive how he does that,” he commented, talking about the way whenever Sehun looked like he was about to say or do something that would make someone else regret being born, all Jongin had to do was breathe to steal his focus away.

Chanyeol snorted. “It’s been like that since middle school, I hardly get surprised anymore.”

“I never thought I’d see someone as oblivious as your friend Jongin, even though someone here comes close.”

“Uh?”

“Chanyeol,” Jongdae grabbed his arm from behind. “I’m going to the library now. I’ll be there for about four hours? Just so you know. I won’t be in our room.”

“O—kay?”

“Yeah. See you later.” And disappeared.

Baekhyun looked amused. Kyungsoo lifted his eyebrows. “Definitely comes close.”

-

_[05:02 p.m.] Jongdae: I’m on my way back!_

Chanyeol’s brain patterns flattened on the same o—kay he had so ungracefully uttered before.

Jongdae never texted him about his whereabouts. It was weird.

When Jongdae peeked inside, he did it carefully, probably having forgotten that there was a noisy as fuck set of little merry for fucking nothing bells hanging over the door. “Hello!”

“Hey, Dae.”

It was only after Jongdae showered that Chanyeol found the courage to emerge from where he was slumped in his bed, nerding out in some online forum about music software, and approach the topic.

“Jongdae? What, uhm, what was that about?”

“What was what about?”

“You going to the library and telling me? And the text? That was weird, man.”

Jongdae blushed. “I thought—maybe you had, you know.”

“No, I don’t know?”

“Someone over.”

Chanyeol squinted. Then widened his eyes. “I spent the afternoon playing the guitar.” He knocked on it where it was laying next to him on the bed. “Alone.”

“Oh,” Jongdae breathed out. And it sounded a little... relieved? “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed, but. You know, with those things Sehun said back then. And. Maybe we should make things. Clearer? I have nothing against it. If you need some privacy from time to time. I can go somewhere else. I’ve been sharing a room with someone my entire life, I know what it’s like. So. Really, it’s no bother. Just because we haven’t known each other for a long time, that doesn’t mean you cannot ask me.”

Chanyeol was so confused he wouldn’t be surprised if his jaw dislocated and reached the floor. 

“I’m not seeing anyone right now. And I’m not the type to bring random people over,” he states, opting for something true and objective to respond without analysing in depth what the other had just said.

“Oh. Sorry. I thought you and Jongin…”

Chanyeol actually touched his own face to make sure his mouth was not too open. “Jongin?” he said a little bit too acutely. He cleared his throat. Besides the hilarious prospect of being associated romantically to Jongin, something far scarier worked its way to the center of Chanyeol’s brain.

“So you figured... I’m gay?”

A mask of absolute horror painted over Jongdae’s face. “Shit—no. Yes? I don’t know? You could… be? Maybe? There’s nothing wrong with it? I didn’t mean to—I don't know?”

“Do _you_ think there’s something wrong with it?” Chanyeol choked out. He was ten seconds away from puking.

Jongdae laughed an ugly laugh, rubbing his damp hair away from his forehead. He said: “Something wrong—no, not at all, fuck, I’m literally gay myself, I—” and then slapped his hands over his mouth.

Chanyeol’s brain performances registered an all-time low and he literally. Flatlined.

Jongdae closed his eyes briefly, collecting himself. “Look,” he said, lowering his hands and staring at the floor. “I’m sorry I sprung that on you. I really hope it doesn’t make things awkward. You could switch rooms with Kyungsoo if you—”

“‘I hope it doesn’t make things awkward?’ What the fuck does that even mean?”

“I am so sorry!”

Chanyeol smiled dumbly, but he forced himself to reign that in. “Jongdae, I’m gay too.”

“You—” Jongdae choked on his spit. “Jesus Christ, Chanyeol.”

“Fuck, Jongdae, who did you take me for? A homophobe?”

“I don’t know, okay? Your reactions were really hard to read. You scared me.”

Chanyeol was almost laughing by now. Because his brain was chanting _yay yay yay my cute hot roommate is gay,_ and the “gay” part was to be read in large, bold letters. “Why would I switch rooms with Kyungsoo? Did anyone give you shit for being gay in the past?”

“Well, since you’re asking, yes.” Jongdae was nowhere near to laughing. “Trusting the wrong friends with the wrong information right at the beginning of high school did not make for an exciting secondary education, since all the boys wouldn’t even dare to be in a ten miles radius from me after someone found it funny to put around rumors about ‘that horny twink Kim Jongdae,’ and the people who would have enjoyed being around me even in spite of that, or _because_ of that, tended to avoid me anyway because I was ‘that freak who sleepwalked Kim Jongdae,’ as if I actually went around murdering people at night,” Jongdae let out all in one breath. “So yes, Chanyeol. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you were another of the numerous male specimens on this planet who thought that I would try to, I don’t know, slap my dick on your face in my sleep just because I’m attracted to men.”

Chanyeol sat there, petrified. “I’m so sorry, Jongdae. Shit, I’m really sorry.”

Jongdae huffed and walked backwards to sit at his desk. “No, it’s okay. You didn’t say anything wrong, actually, you just scared me a little.” He smiled bashfully. “I think you’re a terrific roommate... I would have hated to find out things were going to become awkward.”

Snorting, Chanyeol put aside his laptop, and the fact that Jongdae thought he was terrific. He smirked. “You just need me because I put up with your parasomnia.”

“Hah! You jerk.” Jongdae threw him his pillow.

Chanyeol caught it and chuckled. “You literally thought I was dating Jongin, come on.”

“He was sitting on your lap and everything, it was confusing,” Jongdae pointed out. “But... it’s nicer now that I don’t have to feel awkward. Isn’t it nicer?”

Chanyeol could only agree. He felt a lot lighter than before. Lighter, and freer to ~~hope Jongdae would eventually like him back~~ be himself. He felt braver.

“Glad things are not awkward between us then. I would have hated it.”

And there it was, Jongdae’s blinding smile. 

“Then can I ask you for Jongin’s number?”

Chanyeol suddenly couldn’t remember how positive feelings felt like.

“I could give it to you, but him and Sehun are like soulmates or something. Good luck getting between them,” he grumbled.

Jongdae shivered and laughed. “And having Sehun as a mortal enemy? I’ll pass.” He stood up. “What about Baekhyun?”

Chanyeol was starting to feel murderous. A vein started pulsing on his temple. Was this how Sehun felt all the time? “He’s interested in someone else.”

Jongdae laughed boisterously. “Oh, trust me, I can see that. I have to refrain from wiping the drool from his chin whenever he starts staring at Kyungsoo. I was just trying to confirm all my suspicions.”

The vein stopped throbbing. “Does he even have hope?”

“Kyungsoo’s eyesight might be awful but he’s not blind enough to turn down someone like Baekhyun. He’ll just play hard to get.”

Chanyeol carefully archived that piece of information. He’d tell Baekhyun about this delirious conversation, one day. Maybe once they’re both married to their respective roommates. Or maybe never. Probably never.

Definitely never to Sehun.

And then, a last act of bravery.

“By the way, to go back to where it all started... if you need the room all for yourself someday, just ask. It’s not like I hate the idea of cockblocking Baekhyun by camping in front of his gaming station.”

Jongdae shook his head. “I’m not seeing anyone either. If that ever changes, you’ll definitely notice, and we’ll figure out room arrangements then.”

Chanyeol was a little confused, and was not sure whether to feel heartened or disheartened, but the progress from cute hot roommate to cute hot _single and gay_ roommate alone was remarkable. 

-

Chanyeol woke up because he heard a thudding sound in the bathroom. He sat up, and just like he had imagined, Jongdae was not in his bed. The door of their room was closed, though, and the bells were unmoving. 

He waited. The faucet was turned on and then off and there were other sounds, as if Jongdae was looking for something. Chanyeol briefly inventoried the contents of the cabinets to remember whether there could be anything dangerous Jongdae could hurt himself with, and was relieved by the memory of the only pair of scissors they owned safe in the creaky ass drawer of Chanyeol’s nightstand. 

Still, it was better to put Jongdae back to bed soon, so he got up, groaning.

He already had a hand on the wall, feeling up and down to find the light switch because of course Jongdae didn’t turn it on, when there was a quiet sound like marbles on the tiles. 

Chanyeol burst inside. The lightbulb was a grave offence to the health of his retinas, but it shone light on the bathroom floor that was covered in glass shards.

His breath hitched in his throat; the glass that they had used to hold their toothbrushes until that morning and that was no longer a glass thanks to Jongdae’s clumsy attempt at putting it away in his haste to go to class, had found its way out of the bin they kept in the corner of the room. Because expecting Jongdae not to be clumsy in his sleep was utopic and he had of course tripped on that.

Jongdae was standing right in the middle of that destruction, and he was barefoot. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Jongdae mumbled, his eyebrows tilted in confusion, only one eye open.

“I know. Stay right there where you are now,” Chanyeol warned him when he noticed that Jongdae was sort of looking at him. “Don’t move, Jongdae, you’ll get hurt.”

He pulled his hair backwards, sighing and looking around. He was barefoot as well, he should have gone to retrieve his flip flops and a broom before he could even get close to Jongdae. “Stay there, don’t move,” he warned again, but as soon as he moved to exit the bathroom Jongdae lifted a foot to step forward. 

“Do not fucking move!” Chanyeol seethed panicky. 

He panicked even more when he remembered that he was not supposed to be brusque with a sleepwalker.

Since he was not awake Jongdae didn’t properly react, but he flinched a little, like a person flinches when they dream about falling. He put his foot down.

While he scrambled to find Jongdae’s flip flops under the other’s bed he heard the other whine something like: “I need to water the plants.”

Chanyeol huffed. He finally got his hands on both Jongdae’s slippers. He stumbled all the way back to the bathroom.

As soon as Jongdae saw him again, he tried to walk again, and Chanyeol didn’t even have the time to think.

He tossed the slippers behind himself. In a split second, he reached forward to grab Jongdae and lift him in the air, above the ruins on the floor, before his foot could come in contact with a particularly big glass shard.

He thought it would be a crisis averted, except that the crisis had just begun. 

Jongdae froze at first, then started thrashing in his arms. “No—no, no, no, no—” he whined.

“Just one second and I’ll put you down—” Chanyeol choked out. He turned, trying to find the door.

“No!” Jongdae screamed. He freed one arm from Chanyeol’s hold and started hitting him.

“Fuck, Jongdae—I’ll just—there!” he exclaimed, finally freeing Jongdae as soon as he was far enough from the en-suite. “Jongdae, it’s okay, it’s—ow!”

Jongdae stumbled, his back against the wall, and kicked him away from himself, whining softly.

“Ow! Dae, stop hitting me, for fuck’s sake! Argh!”

Chanyeol fell on his butt. Jongdae slid down until he was on the floor as well, and Chanyeol saw, even in the dim light of the en-suite, the exact moment he woke up. The invisible shift, the head shrug, the way his blinking was totally different than before.

“What’s going on?” Jongdae asked, voice trembling. He huddled on himself. “What—where am I?”

Chanyeol swallowed. “We’re in our room, everything is okay. I didn’t mean to wake you up, it—”

Jongdae struggled to look around. “This is not my room.”

Chanyeol reached up to switch the light on, near the door, so Jongdae could recognise his surroundings. For a few long seconds Chanyeol thought the other was not going to tell anything apart, because he kept looking, and looking, and his breathing kept growing shallow.

In the end, Jongdae gulped and his hands closed around the fabric of his PJs. “Oh,” he weakly said. He sniffled. Chanyeol looked away when he realised Jongdae was wiping his eyes.

He stood up. “Come on, Jongdae. Let’s go back to sleep.”

“Yes... yes.” Jongdae got up with difficulty, propping himself up on the wall. 

“Did your foot get hurt?” Chanyeol asked when he saw him stumble.

Jongdae looked at his own feet as if he had never realised he had feet before. “My…”

Chanyeol couldn’t see anything wrong with his foot, but still offered his arm as support to walk. Slowly, he led Jongdae back to his bed. 

“Why... why are we…” Jongdae mumbled.

“It’s fine. Just go back to sleep. Everything will be better tomorrow,” Chanyeol whispered. “There you go,” he praised when Jongdae sat down, still gripping onto his arm. 

Chanyeol asked himself whether they were close enough to wipe his tears. He answered himself no. But he wanted to. “Lay down. Everything is okay, I promise.”

Jongdae let himself be guided down. “It wasn’t me, I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” Chanyeol smiled, and Jongdae’s eyes started to close. “Get some rest, Dae.”

Jongdae closed his eyes, which meant Chanyeol could finally, finally breathe. 

“God, you scared me.”

Jongdae turned on his side, giving his back to him, his hair sprawled on the pillow like a crown around his head. He hummed something through his closed lips, he twitched, and then he was fully asleep.

He fell asleep while holding onto Chanyeol’s arm.

“Shit.”

Chanyeol pulled lightly, but Jongdae didn’t let go.

“No, man, don’t do this to me,” Chanyeol muttered, trying again and encountering a lot of resistance. “Come on, I have to turn off the lights.”

Jongdae burrowed in his pillow.

“Don’t make me wake you up again, you know I’m not that heartless.”

Jongdae snored. 

_Fuck._

“This is going to be hella awkward tomorrow morning. I’ll pin it on you,” he grumbled, sitting on the bed and swinging his legs up on the mattress. 

“I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” he whined, measuring the space in which he had to fit his body, between the edge of the mattress and Jongdae’s own, and finding out that the likeliness of him falling off the bed was above 100%.

 _Stop complaining, Park Chanyeol,_ his brain suggested when he realised that he was suddenly spooning Jongdae. Which was awesome, and also scary, and Jongdae’s pillow smelled so good, and Chanyeol fell asleep. 

-

The next morning started with Gay Panic mode: ON.

Because Jongdae mumbled something in his ear, and Chanyeol had never heard Jongdae’s voice so close to his ear... so close to him at all.

For once, Chanyeol’s brain immediately supplied him with information about his situation, before he could do something so incredibly stupid such as using the arm that was still around Jongdae to pull him closer. Or nuzzle in the soft tufts of hair in front of his nose. Or shift his hips closer to that tiny, warm body that he liked so much. 

Instead, with a readiness that Chanyeol had seldomly experienced before, he was immediately aware of the necessity to be still and lifeless and to figure out a way to get right out of Jongdae’s bed before he messed up with his cute and hot and single roommate.

“Chanyeol.” Jongdae sounded way too awake. And too close. “Good morning.”

Then had to grab Chanyeol by his shoulder because he nearly rolled off the bed. 

Chanyeol opened his eyes. Jongdae was staring at him with concern, but Concern was the thing Chanyeol felt as he noticed the way Jongdae’s eyes were puffy and adorned by a lattice of red veins. 

“I’m so sorry,” Chanyeol started immediately. “I am so, so sorry, Jongdae. I tried not to wake you up, but you were going to step on the glass and I panicked and I manhandled you a bit, I guess. I am really sorry.”

Jongdae frowns. “What glass? It’s okay, Chanyeol. It’s not forbidden to wake up a somnambulist, especially if waking them up is the lesser evil. I am the one who’s really sorry. I don’t remember much but I think I yelled and—I hope I didn’t hit you.”

“You... well, okay, you did, but just a little, you looked so scared.” Chanyeol considered lying, but he wasn’t able to.

Jongdae nodded to himself. “What glass?”

Chanyeol basically kicked him outside of the room while he cleaned up the bathroom because Jongdae kept tripping over the broom handle and that was not something advisable to do wearing flip flops around a trillion glass shards.

But Jongdae bought him breakfast and hung onto his arm the whole morning. Which was nice.

-

“You don’t understand, he was so, so scared.”

“That sounds sad,” Baekhyun commented, his mouth full around his sandwich. 

Chanyeol nodded in agreement. Of course he failed to mention they slept in the same bed, the not quite sad but quite something else part.

“It’s really fucking sad,” his friend repeated.

“What is sad?” Jongdae chirped from behind them, stomping down the bleachers.

“Chanyeol’s love life,” Baekhyun rushed to answer, still munching.

“Ouch,” Jongdae chuckled. “But haven’t you been single just as long, Byun?”

Chanyeol suppressed the urge to just kiss his roommate for that unexpected save when he sat next to him on the bench, letting go of Kyungsoo’s arm that was looped with his when they sat on either side of their respective roommates.

Baekhyun huffed and tried to bypass Chanyeol’s legs to kick Jongdae, with the only result of a bruise on Chanyeol’s own shin and making Chanyeol crush Jongdae’s tiny frame. “How would you know, Kim?”

“You mentioned it, 12 days ago at lunch.”

Everyone turned to Kyungsoo. Baekhyun’s neck, specifically, made a worrying snapping sound.

“What?” Kyungsoo blinked, and pushed his glasses up his nose.

“Nothing.” Chanyeol cleared his throat, feeling helpful. “That was just—very specific.”

Kyungsoo pushed his glasses up his nose again. But he remained utterly unfazed otherwise, looking pointedly at Chanyeol and obviously not returning the helpful sentiment. “Well, I pay attention when people speak at lunch, Chanyeol, unlike you, since you’re always so busy staring at—”

“Hey, dweebs.”

Chanyeol had never been happier to see Sehun in his life. 

“What’s up, loser,” Baekhyun snarked, throwing the empty packaging of his sandwich at Sehun’s head as he approached. “You invited us here and you dare to be late?”

“Where’s Jongin?” Chanyeol asked quickly. “Why are we here?”

Sehun marched across them, stepping onto the row in front of them. “To answer all your questions, in order: what's up is that I am not a loser. Yes, I dare to be late. Jongin is in our room. We are here because this is the only place where Jongin won’t find us. Anything concerning physical movements that do not belong to a style of dance is to him as profoundly disgusting as cucumbers are to you, Baekhyun.”

Baekhyun groaned sympathetically.

Chanyeol felt obligated to intervene. “Jonginnie once said that basketball is like a dance, though.”

“Right, okay, but he wouldn’t have said that if he saw _you_ playing basketball, Yeol. So the chances that he would find himself anywhere near a basketball field, especially if you’re on it, are as remote as the chances to see you in a relationship, Chanyeol.”

“Woah. Woah, there, where did that come from?” Chanyeol shrieked, shifting his gaze between Baekhyun and Sehun.

Baekhyun absently slapped his arm to shut him up. “Sshhh, it’s okay, Yeol. I think it’s more concerning how Sehun is voluntarily putting physical distance between himself and his soulmate.”

Sehun’s scoff and “he’s not my soulmate” were instantly invalidated by the sudden blush on his cheeks.

In the pause that followed, Chanyeol frowned. “I think those things are equally concerning.”

Sehun sat down on the lower bleacher in front of them. “If you’re so concerned, you shall convene your own meeting, Yeol. This is _my_ own private audience for today’s matters. Your wounded pride can wait or you can find another audience.”

Chanyeol was half a second away from taking advantage of his long legs to shove Sehun down the bleachers and watch him roll and yell in pain, when Jongdae rubbed his shoulder comfortingly and he had to reschedule his bloodthirst because the way Jongdae smiled had to be looked at, intensely and adoringly, right that second.

It didn’t last long, though, because Jongdae obviously turned to smile at Sehun too, switching off the light in Chanyeol’s entire existence, and asked: “What’s wrong, Sehunnie?”

So Chanyeol had to sit there and listen to Sehun ranting about how Jongin had started going out with a guy that was _obviously_ wrong for him and that was going to hurt him so much their story would end, according to him, with Jongin pregnant and caught in a case of illegal drug smuggling in another jurisdiction and spending the following several years in prison. And he had to try to pay attention to all that crap while Jongdae’s elbow casually rested on his shoulder. Quite distracting.

“Sehun, I know you haven’t seen it up close yet and it pains you inconceivably, but I feel like I should inform you that Jongin has a dick. Therefore you can scratch the pregnant part.” Chanyeol’s words sounded slurred because he was smashing his face against his own hand, his elbow resting on his knee. He was basically lowering his upper body to make himself comfortable for Jongdae’s elbow. Because yes, Chanyeol could be _that_ whipped.

“What kind of drugs?” Kyungsoo asked, very interested.

Baekhyun nearly fell off the bench. “Kyungsoo!”

“What? I heard that the mafia is working on synthesizing drugs that activate the unused percentage of the human brain. Like Lucy, the movie, you know. Terrible movie, by the way. And while I feel like I will need that shit to get through midterms, I wouldn’t mind ceding all of it to the four of you morons. You need that to get through life.”

“Hey, why would you call me a moron?” Baekhyun yapped. “I even remembered to unplug the toaster before it caught fire yesterday!”

“How do you know what the mafia is working on?” Jongdae asked naively.

“So now I’m a moron too, on top of undesirable and ungraceful?” Chanyeol groused.

“How am I supposed to know which kind of drugs?” Sehun huffed impatiently.

Kyungsoo kept looking at them for a long, long time, blinking slowly, trying to decide which of their questions deserved to be answered first. Apparently, none of them. “You definitely need those drugs. Any kind of brain improvement, really.”

Baekhyun groaned, before turning to Sehun. “Whatever. What’s the name of the guy Jongin is dating?”

“He’s a Chinese transfer student, they are in the same major. Jang Yixing or something.”

“Oh, Zhang Yixing!” Jongdae exclaimed. “I know him! He’s in my minor! He dances, right? He’s such a great guy,” he gushed.

Sehun hissed. “You’re supposed to hate him! Aren’t you my supportive friend?”

Jongdae lifted one of his perfect brows. “Hah! First of all, bold of you to assume I’m your friend when you keep harassing my roommate like that. Second of all, I knew Yixing last year, so I’ve known him longer than I’ve known you and definitely longer than you’ve known him, so I don’t know exactly how your friendship meter works but—”

Chanyeol wasn’t even listening anymore, his thoughts stuck at the part where Jongdae said he didn’t appreciate Sehun bullying him. Which, okay, Sehun liked to be harsh because showing love the normal way was very hard for him, and Chanyeol knew that himself, Sehun and Baekhyun would go to prison for each other because their reciprocal kind of love transcended amicable pleasantries, which meant harassing each other guaranteed that they kept it real between each other, but that had nothing to do with Sehun’s decade-long attempts at looking like an asshole because he needed to hide the fact that on the inside he was all squishy with feelings for Jongin, but Jongdae couldn’t know all that, and—

He tuned back in time to hear the part in which Jongdae swore to Sehun that he shouldn’t be worried, since Yixing was already in a relationship and he couldn’t be interested in dating Jongin.

“What if he’s polygamous? You cannot know these things.”

“Have you already forgotten the part in which we established I know him very well?”

“All right! God, this was awful,” Sehun hid his face in his hands. 

Baekhyun coughed. “I assume you still aren’t considering the possibility of confessing your feelings to Jongin?”

Sehun snapped his head up. “What feelings? What?” he stuttered. “I’m here—I said—I am only concerned about his well being! He's been my friend since elementary school and—my roommate! I don’t want my roommate to go to prison! He’s my friend!” He glared at everyone. “I would do the same for you!”

“Thank you, I’m very honoured, Hunnie, but don’t look at Baek. He might start having expectations.” Chanyeol sighed. 

Baekhyun slapped his nape, but didn’t respond. “And we all know if we went to prison it would be _your_ fault, Sehun, so spare us the act. The only person on these stupid bleachers that would actually be lawful and useful and make an effort _not_ to ruin our lives would be Jongdae.”

“Aw, thanks man. You really do overestimate me!” Jongdae cooed. “I would only save Chanyeol. Some roommates are too good to just leave them in a ditch.”

Sehun umpfed. “Well, Jongin would save _me._ I don’t know about you nerds.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Hunnie,” Baekhyun cooed, before he turned to Kyungsoo expecting a similar sort of declaration.

Kyungsoo remained still and silent for a while, before turning to Jongdae. The disappointment on Baekhyun’s face was intolerable. 

“Uhm, since you know this Yixing very well…” Kyungsoo cleared his throat. “He doesn’t actually happen to have any magical drug that would make everyone sitting here today less stupid, does he?”

-

It had seemed mandatory that after Chanyeol and Baekhyun introduced their friends, Jongdae and Kyungsoo started bringing their own. Minseok was actually a guy that Baekhyun had been on friendly terms with during sophomore year, with all their going to the same parties. It was great to have some sort of common acquaintance to prove that Chanyeol’s and Baekhyun’s ideal types didn’t just materialise from heaven under the form of new roommates just to bless them (or torture them). 

The fact that Yixing also started joining Jongin and the others at lunch made Chanyeol and Baekhyun crack up at Sehun’s murderous face, but it was very reassuring for everyone to find out that neither Jongin or Yixing were actually interested in each other, so no one had to face Sehun’s wrath. 

Lunch together became the only distraction as the midterms started approaching and Chanyeol started spending more and more time at the library, his frown reflected both on the screen of his laptop and on Baekhyun’s face. 

Also very distracting: Jongdae.

It was getting colder and colder, which meant that for some inexplicable but entirely not opposable reason, the clothes Jongdae started wearing kept becoming larger and larger. And while Chanyeol admitted he started missing the very short shorts that his roommate used to wear in their room, the sweater paws were just something else. Something that left Chanyeol’s heart as mush and his eyes slightly crossed because no one should be allowed to be that cute, ever, not without their hands being held, and Chanyeol was the dumbass not holding them, and it was all so wrong, and oh no look Jongdae is wearing that yellow sweatshirt again—

Autumn also meant bad weather, and a tiny person like Jongdae was constantly risking either to slip and glide across the wet floors and faceplant against a wall when it rained, or to be swept away by a strong wind and fly into the sky. And again, it would be all easily avoidable if only Chanyeol was allowed to hold his hand to either keep him upright or firmly grounded, but he was a dumbass, so he never held it, and he more than once kept talking, convinced that Jongdae was next to him when the other had been swaying in the current, or he had to drop what he had been holding to prevent Jongdae’s perky butt from smashing onto the lobby’s hazardously smooth tiles.

But the thing that was very distracting, and also started becoming a serious issue, was Jongdae’s sleepwalking. 

He had said it would get worse whenever his sleep schedule got messed up or whenever he got especially stressed. The weeks before midterms were a dangerous combination of the two things. 

After the fifth night in a row of hearing the bells, Chanyeol was starting to suffer physically at the repeated interruption of his own sleep.

They were both exhausted during the day, and they would need more than Yixing’s non-existent drugs to keep going with that rhythm.

Sure, he laughed his ass off that time when Jongdae got up in the middle of the night, crawled under his own bed and started complaining about the bad smell of the floor detergent left behind when they mopped the floor earlier that day. 

Of course it had been very cute that time he sat on Chanyeol’s bed and sang him happy birthday, especially because his birthday was that same month and the following morning Jongdae swore he hadn’t known that. 

Things had been tricky when Jongdae showered and then said he would go outside and sunbathe; mindful of what happened the last time he accidentally woke Jongdae up, he had to grab their coats and follow him to the lobby before Jongdae would let himself be persuaded that it was not a good idea. 

And yes, it was hilarious when Chanyeol woke up one night to Jongdae amiably conversing with one of his sweaters, addressing it as his brother Jongdeok while emptying a water bottle on the floor because he was “watering the plants” again.

Then one night, Jongdae woke up again during one of his episodes. He snapped out of it without Chanyeol even doing much, he simply called his name and the bells over the door did the rest.

Chanyeol didn’t like how vulnerable Jongdae looked when he woke up. 

“It’s the eight night in a row, Jongdae,” Chanyeol said carefully as soon as Jongdae was done gulping down large sips of fresh water to calm himself down.

Jongdae put the glass on his nightstand and slowly walked to sit down on Chanyeol’s bed, next to him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered. “Maybe I could ask Kyungsoo or Minseok to switch places with you, to give you a break.”

“No, man, really, I’m not saying it just for me, I just... worry about you, too. It’s clear it’s not going well for you, either.”

And it was true. Though Jongdae was not technically awake during his episodes, he was not really sleeping either, and he woke himself up at the end of most episodes anyway. It meant that in the morning he was just as tired as Chanyeol was, and suffered the discontinued, fitful sleep they could get. 

That day in the library, Chanyeol had fallen asleep with his face on his laptop keyboard, filling half of his assignment with three pages of keyboard smashes. When he had woken up, Kyungsoo was lightly patting Jongdae's back like a mother on a newborn’s. When he flinched awake, the architect in the making had ripped the page that had been glued to his face out of his book.

Sehun had come over for some takeout dinner and had indiscreetly pointed out their undereye bags alluding to nightly activities that could have kept them awake, as his perfect brows made weird spazzing jumps. Minseok, who besides being Baekhyun’s fellow hardcore clubber was also Jongdae’s childhood friend and classmate, had been there too, and nearly choked on his slice of pizza. They both had been too tired to even respond properly, though Jongdae’s whine of “I wish it was _that_ that kept me awake” had made Chanyeol nearly choke as well.

Things were not going well.

“Is there not a way to make it calm down? A medication or something?”

“No, those mess with me even worse. There is one thing... it works, well, worked well in the past.” Jongdae kept his head hung low as he said it.

Chanyeol waited. 

“One thing I used to do sometimes when I roomed with Junmyeon and I knew I was in a state that would most likely lead to me waking up in the middle of a field somewhere. Well, we shared this room, and as you can see the beds are against the walls and there’s a headboard and a footboard—he would sleep next to me, so I would be stuck between him and the wall.”

Chanyeol supposed he shouldn’t be so ecstatic at the idea, since Jongdae seemed so distressed by it.

“When I slept between him and the wall, if I tried to get up it would either end with me feeling another person and get back to sleep without an issue, or he could just stop me without having to get up if I was persistent, and he just rolled on the other side and continued sleeping. He’s a heavy sleeper.”

In the following pause, Chanyeol realised he was expected to say something because Jongdae was not going to actually _ask._ Whether he feared Chanyeol would say “yes” only out of politeness and was offering him a chance to get out of the situation, or he was too shy to formulate the question, Chanyeol didn’t care.

“I—I am okay with that, if you are,” he stammered out.

He expected Jongdae to become flustered and to insist that he didn’t have to, but Jongdae simply smiled a little. 

So Chanyeol of course was even more sleep deprived the next day, because hello? Jongdae slept next to him? How could he sleep a wink knowing that?

“You’re such a creep,” Baekhyun commented the next day at the end of a rather unproductive study session, unplugging his laptop from under Jongdae’s desk and making sure all his disgust was evident in the overly-theatrical gesture.

“I’m not being a creep, Baek, I’m just so fucking worried that I might, I don’t know, accidentally roll over and squash him. Have you seen how tiny he is? And how tiny is this bed? I don’t even fit in it comfortably, let alone now that there’s two of us occupying it!”

Baekhyun started to roll up the cable, his expression quickly morphing into a smirk. “Oh, no, Yeol. You’re just scared he might knee your morning wood.”

Chanyeol grunts. “And _then_ he’d think that I’m a creep that gets hard sleeping next to him and—ew oh my God what if he hates me!”

“Every single guy in the world wakes up a little hard, Yeol, if it happens just pull some statistics out of your ass and laugh it off and move on, it’s not a big deal.”

But when Jongdae came back to their dorm, later, Kyungsoo was with him. And apparently Kyungsoo thought it was a _huge_ deal, judging by the way he kept staring at the two pillows on Chanyeol’s bed and at the perfectly made bedding on Jongdae’s untouched one.

“I’m going to sit down here,” he said pointedly when the others all snuggled on Chanyeol’s bed, deciding to sit on Jongdae’s instead.

Jongdae nearly tripped over Baekhyun’s legs in his haste to go sit next to Chanyeol. He shoved his laptop in his hands. “Chanyeol! Please help me! It said I should let the system update so I did what it told me to do and now I think this damn thing rebooted and I lost everything!” he whined, clearly distressed.

Chanyeol blinked at Jongdae. “How could you _accidentally_ reboot your laptop? It’s not something you do _accidentally._ ”

Jongdae sat next to him, pulling at his hair. “I don’t know! Please tell me there’s a way to get my stuff back, I need it for my thesis! You’re the only person who can prevent me from having a breakdown right now!”

Baekhyun coughed. “I mean, I am in Chanyeol’s major, it’s not like he’s the _only_ one here.”

“And I am one of your best friends, I might not reboot your computer but I can reboot your brain when you start being dramatic.”

Jongdae ignores Baekhyun and glares at Kyungsoo. “Oh, so that’s what you call it? Rebooting? Patting me on the back and telling me I should get a head start and rewrite all my projects from scratch is _rebooting?_ ”

Chanyeol studied the screen for a while, only vaguely aware of how Jongdae was spiralling into a state of deep, gloomy panic. 

“Ever thought of saving your stuff on cloud or on an external drive?”

“On a cloud? What?”

“Nevermind,” Chanyeol sighed. He would buy Jongdae an external drive for Christmas, he decided. “I think I can fix this,” he mumbled, more to himself than to anyone else. 

Jongdae’s eyes were so sparkly when he yelled a “really?” that was at least a dozen octaves above normal.

He hugged Chanyeol when he received confirmation, still yelling, and Baekhyun had to get up and go sit with Kyungsoo while massaging his ears. “How do you live with someone so loud, Yeol? Is all that elven cartilage actually a protection against ultrasound?”

Jongdae unlatched from Chanyeol and started caressing his laptop as if it was a pet, glaring at Baekhyun. “As if you didn’t have some of the biggest ears I have ever seen, dumbass.”

“They were already best friends when God was distributing ears, and they queued twice because they thought it was the queue for the gaming consoles,” Kyungsoo says, examining Baekhyun’s head as he sat next to him. He turned to Jongdae again. “What’s with your fixation with Chanyeol’s ears, anyway.”

“I am only fixated on protecting the self-esteem of the people around me. If you weren’t all so busy picking on each other all the goddamn time, you’d notice I do that for all of you.”

Which was a lie. Chanyeol had noticed that Jongdae seemed to do that only with him. He remembers clearly when he had reached that confusing conclusion, during sleepless night number 4892 right after Jongdae had sat up in his bed, proclaimed a very heartfelt “Justice for Sharpay Evans” and went back to sleep after throwing his pillow across the room.

And he had spent the rest of the night reading Twitter threads about High School Musical’s antagonist to distract himself from the thought that while it was nice of Jongdae to take his side even during some inoffensive banter, it also meant that his roommate saw him as a charity case.

Not nice.

“I don’t do that all the time. Leave me out of this.” Kyungsoo deadpanned.

“Hell yeah, we all do,” Baekhyun snickered. “Isn’t that what friends are for?”

“No,” responded Kyungsoo at once.

“That’s what Sehun is for,” Chanyeol added.

Baekhyun grunted and stood up. “I’ll leave you two so you can be each other’s computer slash ego heroes,” he chuckled, pinching Chanyeol’s ear on his way out. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you.” Kyungsoo followed him, and with one last look at Jongdae’s pillow on Chanyeol’s bed, he closed the door.

Jongdae immediately smashed against said pillow. “Will you really be able to fix it?”

“Yeah. I can start after we eat something.”

“Oh, right, dinner. Let’s go get something to eat. It’s on me!”

After they filled their bellies and Chanyeol typed the evening away, he was able to restore Jongdae’s laptop to its original state and recover all the data. Jongdae nearly cried and called Kyungsoo to make the joyful announcement.

“I never asked,” Chanyeol started carefully when he hung up. “But you have many friends on campus... why didn’t you room with any of them after Junmyeon left?”

Jongdae laughed. “I didn’t have the courage to ask, to be honest. I didn’t want to burden them. It’s stupid, especially because I knew it meant burdening some stranger, and I’m very lucky that that stranger has been you,” he bit his lips, nervous. “Because you’re extremely patient.”

“Oh. Because of the sleepwalking then?”

“Yes, but not just for that... Minseok has roomed with a friend of his since freshman year, Yixing rooms with another transfer student, and Kyungsoo was actually supposed to room with a guy from his town who decided to drop out like a week before the beginning of the semester, but Soo was already here and had already unpacked all his stuff and it all seemed so complicated. And then Baekhyun arrived.”

“What do you mean?”

“Kyungsoo has been very enthusiastic about his new roommate. He texted me like five minutes after Baekhyun arrived. And at that point it felt cruel to ask him. I was ready to room alone and just get bracelets of rattling bells or something to wake myself up.”

“Kyungsoo _really_ likes Baekhyun, then.”

“He does. I don’t know _how_ he does, though.”

They both laughed.

Jongdae approached the bed. “Then, can I?”

Chanyeol was definitely in his head. He tried to ignore how it could have sounded sexual if Jongdae hadn’t been wearing a pajama top that basically reached his knees, on top of plaid pants tucked into his socks. Hot. 

“Sure. It’ll work.”

Jongdae crawled on and laid down near the wall, pulling the covers up to his chin. “You’re so patient to let me do this.”

Chanyeol shrugged. “For real, man, it’s not a problem. I hope I don’t roll over on you or something.”

Jongdae laughed. “I should say the same, but I _know_ I will try to roll over you to get out of bed. I apologise in advance if I accidentally knee your balls.”

Chanyeol briefly wondered whether Jongdae had been listening to the conversation he had had with Baekhyun. “I need them, so be careful.”

“You need them, really? I thought you weren’t seeing anyone. What would your boyfriend say if he found out you let your roommate in your bed?”

Chanyeol sputtered. “I could be. In a relationship.”

Jongdae’s eyes widened comically. “You started seeing someone? Oh, I’m sorry, should I—”

“I didn’t, but just because Sehun and Baekhyun like to pour out their own sexual frustration in the form of highlighting my own single-ness that doesn’t mean I couldn’t be in a relationship. I can do relationships. I am interested in a relationship.”

Like a cat focused on something extremely interesting outside of the window, Jongdae’s eyes remained focused on his face. “Of course. Me too. I mean, yeah, who isn’t.”

Chanyeol would have rather slept under the bed, unseen and unheard, than keep looking at Jongdae.

“Sorry. You’re always so nice to me, I don’t know where that came from.”

Jongdae simply patted the space next to himself, over the covers. “I would never make impolite commentary about your romantic life intentionally, Chanyeol. I hope you know that. That’s not my kind of humour, plus I’m not as close to you as Baekhyun is. That’s a liberty I’d never take with you.”

Reluctantly, Chanyeol sat down. Oh, how he wished Jongdae was as close to him as Baekhyun. Or more. Physically, they were about to be, so Chanyeol tried to pull himself together. “Why do you always jump in when my friends are roasting me? You don’t need to defend me.”

Jongdae chuckled. “I know. I’m just using those openings to compliment you. I guess I’ve been too subtle?” he chuckled again, and Chanyeol thought he could hear a pinch of nervousness. “But if you don’t appreciate me doing that, I can stop.”

_Don’t stop!_

Chanyeol deflated. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“Because you are nice to me.”

“I’m not just being nice to you, Jongdae, I really care.”

“I do, too. Now lay down here and sleep, or else our chances to try to have a faint semblance of a sleep schedule will evaporate again.”

Needless to say, Chanyeol was still awake when Jongdae rolled around next to him, around 1 a.m. kicking him in the shins. Not as painful as the crotch, but still. “Yeol,” Jongdae slurred. “Do you have a green pen?”

Chanyeol groaned internally. “Green pens stopped being cool after elementary school, Dae.”

“But I need it to write cute notes on my next cardboard model.”

Chanyeol snorted. “I’m sure your notes will be cute regardless, Dae.”

“I like things to be organised.”

Crossing his hands over his stomach, Chanyeol sighed. “Admirable quality.”

“I’m a fucking virgo.”

“That’s lovely.”

Now he was making conversation with a somnambulist. Life was great.

“I will get you a green pen tomorrow if that makes you happy, okay? Now you should sleep. You need to rest.”

“Okay.”

And Jongdae just flopped down, half on top of him, wiggled a little, mumbled something, and then was deep in sleep. 

Chanyeol passed out of sheer exhaustion one hour later, after overthinking compliments and how Jongdae’s shoulder jammed against his chest and his knee poked his thigh.

-

“Catch!”

Jongdae juggled his keys and his newly resurrected laptop and obviously failed to catch it, and it nearly flew out of the window along with Jongdae himself.

Bold of Chanyeol to assume that someone like Jongdae would succeed at such a feat.

“What is this?”

“A green pen.”

Jongdae lifted a brow. “Whose green pen is it?”

“Yours?”

“I haven’t owned green pens since elementary school, Chanyeol.”

“You asked for a green pen last night, so I got one for you,” Chanyeol shrugged.

Jongdae bent to pick it up from the floor and examined it. Then laughed. “You know that I was talking in my sleep, right? Because I don’t remember asking for a green pen.”

“I know that. But you said you needed it for your notes, about your cardboard something. I saw it on display at the checkout at the administration office this morning, so I got it for you.”

He decided it was totally not a good idea to mention how he had lost nearly one hour searching for a green pen on campus and had to resort to Sehun who was out in the city to get one, and that Sehun will _never_ know why Chanyeol needed a green pen.

Jongdae thanked him with a huge smile that threatened to make the sun stomp away from the sky. “Why were you in admin, though? Were you finally asking to switch rooms?”

“You wish.”

Jongdae laughed. “I’ll try to ask you for a ticket to the Maldives tonight, let’s see how that goes.”

Suddenly, the door opened and Sehun barged in. 

Jongdae got so startled he nearly fell inside his closet where he was hanging his jacket and his glasses slipped from his face. “What the—”

“Nerds! Where’s Jongin?”

Chanyeol closed his laptop. “I wait with ardent anticipation for the day you will finally drop out and fuck off to a country across the world so I will live without the constant fear of having to deal with you as unexpectedly as now.”

“Is he here or not?”

There was something about Sehun that suggested he was experiencing a state of stress much more hefty than the approaching midterm or the mild panic about Jongin wandering off without warning him, therefore demonstrating that he could live without him, which always made him question his purpose on the Earth and whatever other absurdity spilled from his lips whenever he was drunk and Jongin was out of earshot.

“Of course he’s here, he’s under my bed, hiding from you.”

Sehun paled and slammed the door shut behind himself. “Jongin!”

Chanyeol stood up. “He’s not here, you moron. What the fuck happened?”

Sehun opened his mouth to answer, but then his gaze shifted to Jongdae. His attention instantly zeroed on the green thing Jongdae was still holding in his hand. 

“Park Chanyeol, you made me go and buy—I can’t even, you helpless fucking—”

“Okay!” Chanyeol yelled. He grabbed Sehun by the shoulder, pinching where he knew it would hurt. “I’ll help you find Jongin! Let’s go!”

“—pathetically smitten moron,” Sehun was still seething when Chanyeol managed to drag him outside and close the door. 

“Didn’t you have an emergency?”

“Did I? Did you? You sent me on a tour of half the stationery stores of the planet because _Jongdae_ needed a pen?!”

“Bye, Sehun. I guess finding Jongin was not a priority.”

“It is a fucking priority.”

“Then be tolerable and I might help you. Why didn’t you knock or something?”

“Because I knew I didn’t risk to catch you two doing compromising things, and I was right since you sent me on a quest today to fucking find a _pen_ instead of _lube_ —”

Chanyeol huffed and started dragging him by the elbow. “What’s wrong with Jongin?”

“I might have told him that I love him.”

Chanyeol’s heart skipped a beat. He looked up at the ceiling, he closed his eyes, and lifted his arms in thanks. “It only took you ten years! Hallelujah! Congratulations!”

“What took him ten years? To confess to Jongin?” Baekhyun grumbled, exiting the elevator with a can of Coke in his hand.

“Yes!” Chanyeol roared.

Baekhyun nearly showered them both with the large swig of Coke he had just introduced in his mouth. He only partially succeeded because Chanyeol hid behind Sehun and his friend took the most of it.

“Oh Sehun!” Baekhyun coughed. 

“I did not confess, you idiot, it was not an “I’m in love with you” I love you, it was more like a “oh you sent me half of your essay for inspiration you’re the best” I love you, but the point is Jongin laughed! Why would he laugh?” Sehun whined, examining his shirt.

“Uh, because it’s the weirdest fucking thing that would come out of your venomous lips? You’re literally the last person in this country who I imagined capable of saying the L word,” Chanyeol said.

“What happened then?” Baekhyun pressed. “Did he finally have a cathartic moment in which his life flashed in front of his eyes and he realised he, too, has been in love with you since kindergarten?”

“Ew,” Sehun cringed. “What kind of fairy tale movies do you watch when we’re not around, Baek?”

“What did Jongin say?” Chanyeol insisted.

“Nothing. He left. Laughed, stood up, grabbed his bag and left. And I need to find him and tell him I was joking.”

“No!” the other two yelled in unison. 

Sehun stumbled back. “Why not! I need to do something! Because I don’t l—you know. What are _you_ doing here anyway,” he whined and slapped Baekhyun’s arm.

Baekhyun snorted. “I was coming to visit one of my besties to complain about my own feelings, which by the way I have owned and embraced months ago. I was going to rant to Yeol about how Kyungsoo’s smile is heart shaped, but you’re invited to listen too, Hunnie.”

“Oh, I see how you’ve owned those feelings. Have _you_ confessed to Kyungsoo, genius?”

Baekhyun blushed. Sehun started looking smug, as he turned to Chanyeol. “And you, mister green pen. How about you embrace your own feelings before we find ourselves in this exact spot in ten years with me yelling ‘oh, it only took you ten years to confess?’ Embrace your own feelings before you want to lecture me about mine.”

Chanyeol grimaced. “Dude. I really hope I’ll be done with college in ten years, at least.”

“You missed the point.”

“And you missed a chance to shut the fuck up.”

“Fuck you.”

“Love you.”

“Ew!”

Baekhyun elbowed Chanyeol. “He’s a lost cause.”

“He is. He even forgot Jongin had practice today, so that’s where he most likely ran off to,” Chanyeol sighed and threw an arm around Baekhyun’s shoulders. “If I listen to you rant about how Kyungsoo’s lips look like a heart, will you listen to me rant about how Jongdae’s look like a kitten’s?”

Baekhyun offered him his Coke and patted his chest. “I got you, my friend. Bleachers?”

“Let’s go.”

“Are you going to leave me here?” Sehun barked. 

“You can come with us and tell us something about Jongin,” Chanyeol casually threw over his shoulder.

“There’s nothing to tell.”

“I don’t know, dude, his lips look pretty kissable too.”

“They’re not—I don’t—don’t you dare! Stay away from Jongin’s lips!”

“Then see you when you’ll become a little more emotionally aware.”

Sehun followed them to the bleachers.

-

Jongdae tried to leave his bed again that night, saying something about helping his mom folding the laundry, and Chanyeol sleepily wrestled him trying to win the argument without being actually awake either, so he had a vague memory of their discussion that felt a little like a dream, and he wondered whether that was how Jongdae remembered his nightly adventures.

And in the morning Jongdae was clinging to his arm.

The following morning too, he had an arm slung over his chest. Chanyeol carefully removed his own arm that had found its way around Jongdae's back in his sleep.

And the day after that, Jongdae slept basically on top of him after trying to crawl out of bed and desisting only after Chanyeol trapped him with his own arms. 

And then again.

And again.

Chanyeol didn’t want to delude himself that it meant anything more than Jongdae’s failed attempts at escaping from the bed, instead of enjoying what was in it.

-

Chanyeol blinked drowsily at the shadows on the ceiling. The streetlight created faint shadows of the leaves moving in the wind, and he could hear the distant voices of people chattering and singing on the sidewalk, three stories below. 

It was a Friday and he should be with those students celebrating the end of midterms (or trying to forget they had happened at all) but it had taken him one look in the mirror, as Jongdae and he sleepily brushed their teeth next to each other, to establish that neither of them was going anywhere. 

They really needed to sleep. 

They shamelessly cancelled on their friends, tucked themselves into bed at 9 p.m., and were both snoring with gusto before 10. Yolo.

Kyungsoo had sounded a little sad on the phone, but Baekhyun had been elated at the prospect of having his roommate potentially drunk, potentially alone in a potentially dark and loud place.

Chanyeol was long past the phase in which his first thought upon waking up was “why am I awake” and he had moved on long ago to the immediate question of “where is Jongdae.”

He sleepily felt around in his bed, panicking a little when he couldn’t feel the other’s frame next to him. 

Right. Because none of them questioned the necessity of sleeping together after the end of midterms, and of course Chanyeol decides to panic about it now, at the infamous fuck o’clock in the morning, when Jongdae has gone missing.

He couldn’t have been sleeping so soundly not to feel Jongdae crawling across him, could he? He sat up abruptly. 

Except that he couldn’t sit up because there was something heavy on his stomach.

So the time had finally come. He woke up to Jongdae sitting on him.

Definitely better than an iguana.

He almost yelled anyway. 

“Jongdae?” he gasped.

Jongdae didn’t answer. Chanyeol’s eyes slowly got used to the darkness, until he could see the flannel of Jongdae’s pajama bottoms framing his own waist.

“Jongdae, what’s wrong?” he asked with a shaky voice, turning the light on. 

Jongdae was staring at a point next to Chanyeol’s head. “I can’t get out. I need to pee.”

“Why can’t you?”

“The blankie,” Jongdae muttered. “I’m stuck.”

Chanyeol wanted to coo out loud, which would have been better than yelling, but inappropriate anyway. He helped Jongdae free his foot from a tangle in the bedding and tumble to the other side and pushed him upright. Jongdae staggered out of bed and into the bathroom, carried out his bodily functions, flushed and came back, not before addressing the shower curtain with a disappointed: “This is not the fridge.”

The disappointment must have been the reason why he miscalculated the force with which he closed the bathroom door, because it made a small slam, loud enough to wake him up.

His sharp intake of air and his tossing were familiar, by now. 

“You’re all right, Dae,” Chanyeol called from the bed. 

Jongdae sat down at the foot of the bed, gulping. “All right.”

“You’re in your bed—well, my bed, but anyway. It’s okay. You went to pee.”

Jongdae slowly looked around, then laughed covering his face with a hand. He let Chanyeol help him sit next to him and pull the duvet over his legs. He rubbed his hands on his eyes. “Fuck. I was so looking forward to a good night’s sleep. I’m so sorry, Yeol. What time is it?”

Chanyeol rubbed his back comfortingly, while reaching for his phone on the nightstand. “2:40.”

“Fuuu-ck.”

“You’re freezing. Come on, lay down.”

Jongdae obeyed, and Chanyeol turned off the light. 

“What did I do?” Jongdae asked with a hint of fear in his voice.

“You went to pee. You left the door open, asshole.”

Jongdae laughed heartily, which was what Chanyeol had hoped for. “Oh, God, the things I put you through. Did you enjoy the view?”

Chanyeol laughed as well, ignoring the blaring alarms in his brain. “In case you haven’t noticed, the toilet is facing this way. You can be quite acrobatic when you sleepwalk, but your attempts at peeing in a way that would allow me to see your dick from here would have surely ended up with me mopping the floor at 3 in the morning.”

Jongdae kept laughing. “Excuse you, my dick is worth it.”

“Said every owner of every dick, ever.”

“Duh.”

They laid back down, still giggling, and Chanyeol sighed happily at the familiarity of it all, at how comfortable it felt despite the violent tornado of butterflies in his stomach. 

He locked his phone to put it back away, when he caught the notifications at the top of the screen.

“Oh my God.”

“What?”

“Jongdae. Oh my God.”

Jongdae turned to him with his whole body, fluffing his pillow. “What? What happened?”

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you this, but…”

“Yeah, but you will tell me anyway. What’s going on?”

Chanyeol turned the screen so he could read too.

 _[01:12 a.m.] Baekhyunee: Yroue such a ufcking loser_ _  
_ _[01:12 a.m.] Baekhyunee: Whu didn’t you come wid ud to the party_

Jongdae chuckled. “He’s wasted isn’t he?”

“Keep reading.”

 _[01:45 a.m.] Baekhyunee: I’m am sdo proud to inform you that_ _  
_ _[01:46 a.m.] Baekhyunee: Knyugsoo_ _  
_ _[01:46 a.m.] Baekhyunee: with hes impressive powers of persUasion_ _  
_ _[01:46 a.m.] Baekhyunee: basicslly_  
_[01:47 a.m.] Baekhyunee: idek how he does that_  
_[01:47 a.m.] Baekhyunee: he made our sehunie confdess to our nini !!!_  
_[01:47 a.m.] Baekhyunee: thy’e kiSSING_

Jongdae’s eyebrows lifted considerably from their usual places as he tapped on the picture Baekhyun had attached. It was nothing very explanatory, really, just a very dark, very blurry picture of two vague silhouettes that were indeed very close to each other. It could be anyone, though. Chanyeol wouldn’t be surprised if it was two random guys (or a guy and a girl, or two girls even) minding their own business in the darkness over which Baekhyun constructed a whole storyline.

 _[02:14 a.m.] Baekhyunee: yeol u sick_ _  
_ _[02:14 a.m.] Baekhyunee: *sukcv_ _  
_ _[02:14 a.m.] Baekhyunee: * SUCK_

Jongdae stared at Chanyeol, who was quite crazed. “Haven’t you waited for this moment for like ten years?”

“To hear Baekhyun tell me I suck? Oh, no, that happens on the daily.”

“I’m talking about Sehun and Jongin!”

Chanyeol swallowed and turned to Jongdae to answer, only belatedly realising that the other had used his shoulder as a pillow to get closer to watch the phone. So they were very very close now, and the way it seemed to not bother Jongdae at all was quite adrenalinic.

“Yeah. Ten years. Yeah.”

Jongdae remained there, still looking at him, breathing calmly. Only after a long time he snorted and resumed his pillow-fluffing ministrations. “I can tell, Kyungsoo’s in a mood. Ten bucks he’ll shove his tongue down Baekhyun’s throat by the end of the night.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Prepare the ten bucks.”

Chanyeol had to actually give the ten bucks to Jongdae at seven in the morning, when Baekhyun barged in and flopped on the bed between them, with his eyeliner smudged and quite the dreamy expression, obviously still half drunk.

-

It would have been _very_ awkward for Chanyeol and his desperate crush from that moment onwards, except that not much time was left before Christmas break and the new couples spent all the available time exploring the privileges of sharing a room. Chanyeol and Jongdae were left to their own devices. 

They went out with Yixing and Minseok, and when Jongdae’s insanely handsome ex-guardian/best friend Junmyeon came back from LA for the break, they were introduced to each other and had a very pleasant conversation about Jongdae’s sleepwalking patterns, which Jongdae politely pretended not to hear as he got crushed by literally everyone else at the bowling alley. 

Chanyeol shook his head, taking a swig of his beer. “I don’t know, I was so scared I would do something wrong in the beginning, but now it’s becoming a lot more manageable.”

Junmyeon nodded slowly. “He’s probably the least annoying sleepwalker in history. Like his awake persona. So considerate. Does he thank you for being nice while he has an episode?”

Chanyeol snorted. “Right? He totally does. And he’s such a cuddly sleepwalker, too.”

Junmyeon hadn’t answered, one of his thick brows lifting.

It was pleasant, but the times Chanyeol preferred were the ones in which he and Jongdae took strolls around the parks in the city, shopped for Christmas gifts for their respective families, and did a lot of other normal things that they had normally done before, but that now, alone like this, looked a lot like a huge uninterrupted date to Chanyeol. 

It was also pleasant how Jongdae finally slept and let him sleep, if he didn’t count the occasional urge to water their non-existent plants and the expressive “look at all these chickens” Jongdae proclaimed at the window one friday night, gesturing at the sparse groups of students walking back to their dorms.

And how, when they went back home to their families, they kept texting without a pause. Chanyeol was over the moon whenever Jongdae answered his texts (every single one of them!) because he was sure the other had better things to do and was going to leave him on read eventually, even accidentally. But Jongdae kept sending him awful gifs and random stories, random “today I woke up under the table in the kitchen, no one here can do your job”, and “today I spilled my eggnog on my brother’s fiance’s mother’s silk gown, I think everyone will hate me for at least the next ten Christmases”, and even called him on New Year’s Eve (Sehun ruined most of the call and Chanyeol was too drunk to do much other than throwing peace signs and giving random shoutouts and then weep on Baekhyun’s shoulder when it was over, but it was still nice).

Chanyeol started having the shadow of a doubt. It was not normal, right? It shouldn’t be. Yes, Jongdae was talkative and friendly. Yes, they were used to being around each other 24/7. Yes, Jongdae was too nice to leave him on read and Chanyeol was too smitten to do so as well, but still. Yes, Jongdae said he was nice, but he also said that about every single other person he met. Even Sehun!

It didn’t mean anything. Chanyeol carefully smothered any hope he might be developing.

-

_[05:05 p.m.] Dae: Hey favourite roommate! I just arrived at the bus station, I’ll be at the dorms in like 15 mins_

_[05:08 p.m.] Loey: Of course I’m your favourite roommate, I’m your only roommate_

_[05:09 p.m.] Dae: Ugh you’re unbelievable_ _  
_ _[05:09 p.m.] Dae: Whatever_ _  
_ _[05:09 p.m.] Dae: Where are you_

_[05:14 p.m.] Loey: Stuck in the middle of nowhere with Baek_

_[05:15 p.m] Dae: That sounds awful_

_[05:22 p.m.] Loey: Yeah especially bc our first train was late and we lost our connection. There’s also a strike or something. The next one is in like 5 hours_

_[05:23 p.m.] Dae: You’re kidding me_

_[05:30 p.m.] Loey: I wish I was kidding. Imagine being stuck in a deserted train station with Baek who doesn’t stop bitching about how he’s losing the time he would otherwise employ cuddling Kyungsoo. I can’t even throw him under a train because there is a damn strike and there are no trains_

_[05:32 p.m.] Dae: My condolences. What about Jongin and Sehun_

_[05:38 p.m.] Loey: They’re making out somewhere. Or being disgusting, watching the sunset as they discuss their soulmate-ness. Or both. They left me their bags. I hate it here._ _  
_ _[05:39 p.m.] Loey: I’ll probably be there really late tonight. I’m sorry_

Seven hours later, at one a.m, Chanyeol and his friends finally got out of their uber in front of the dorms. 

“I thought we’d never make it,” Chanyeol huffed, staring at the lobby with a dreamy expression.

Baekhyun grunted. “Wasn’t there a college closer to our stupid town?”

“Or, even better,” Chanyeol stretched his back. “Couldn’t we have a dream job that wouldn’t require attending a college far from our stupid town in the first place?”

With a cackle, Sehun reasoned: “We chose this college exactly because we couldn’t wait to get out of our stupid town.”

Jongin stretched his back with results audibly more satisfying. “Nonsense. _I_ chose this college because there was the dance program I was interested in. Sehun followed me because he couldn’t live without me.”

“There was no need to expose me like that,” Sehun gasped.

“As if all of us didn’t already know,” Baekhyun snorted. He picked up his bags and started marching to his room. “Let’s go. I don’t want to see your ugly faces for at least a week after today.”

They all scattered to their respective rooms. Chanyeol was more than a little excited to be reunited with Jongdae, even though he knew he was going to be as quiet as possible in case his roommate was already asleep.

He smiled to himself in the hallway, his keys cool and reassuring in his hand, wondering whether Jongdae would be sleeping in his bed.

Except that Jongdae was not even in their room.

Chanyeol was already alert when he found the door ajar; Jongdae was nowhere to be seen. 

He only grabbed Jongdae’s coat before he ran out.

“What the hell, Yeol?” Baekhyun seethed through the door after Chanyeol banged his fists on it for two solid minutes.

“Is Jongdae here?”

“No, what—”

Chanyeol pushed the door open and walked inside. “Is Kyungsoo here?”

Kyungsoo was putting his shirt back on, looking murderous. “Where else would I be?”

“I don’t know? Did Jongdae have plans for tonight?”

“No, he said he wanted to go to bed early to—”

Chanyeol raised Jongdae’s coat. “He’s not in his bed, the door was open, he left his phone, his wallet, his keys!”

Baekhyun gasped. “Do you think he’s sleepwalking?”

Kyungsoo cursed and rushed out of bed to grab his own coat. “Let’s go. We need to find him. Code red.”

Chanyeol didn’t need to be told twice. “Can you call Minseok as well?”

“On it. Jesus, I’ll find him and I’ll chain him to his fucking bed.”

Baekhyun wrapped himself in a scarf as he pushed Chanyeol out of the door. “Didn’t you have those stupid annoying bells for this eventuality?”

“They don’t always work. He said he grew accustomed to the sound or something. I swear to God, I’ll switch them with firecrackers or something.”

“Shit, good idea. Just go, Yeol. We should split up. I’ll call you if I find him, let’s start with the common rooms. Maybe he was hungry and couldn’t find your chocolate stash because Sehun stole it before we left for Christmas break. Don’t tell him I told you that, tho,” Baekhyun started trotting down the stairs.

“Fucking Sehun. Hey, this is his floor, Baek, go call him and Jongin, too. I want both those idiots on Jongdae’s trail, too, I don’t care if you have to unstick his penis from any of Jongin’s body parts!”

“With much pleasure!”

Chanyeol ran. They searched every corridor of every floor of the entire dorm building, stormed into every bathroom and every storage room and every office that wasn’t locked, and then ran outside, Chanyeol’s breath bright in the light of the lampposts as he panted in the cold night. 

Luckily Minseok had been outside with a group of friends and was just getting back to the dorms, so he took charge of the area surrounding the entrance of campus in the slim chance that Jongdae had walked out unnoticed. He got a text from Jongin saying they met a security guard near the lecture halls and they informed him of the situation, so they were combing the area together.

Chanyeol kept running around the auditorium, the bleachers, the canteen, he even crossed Kyungsoo once, but nothing. He was panicking, sweating, he couldn’t breathe and the more he breathed and shouted Jongdae’s name the more the freezing air of the night burned his throat and lungs. 

It was too cold. And Jongdae had left the room without even wearing his _slippers._

And then Chanyeol saw him.

Jongdae was sitting under a tree, hugging his knees. In the snow. 

“Jongdae! Jongdae, oh my God—” he stumbled all the way to him, wetting his own feet as the snow seeped through his jeans at the ankles. “Jongdae, are you awake?”

Jongdae was awake. And he was terrified. 

As soon as he saw him, he wiped his cheeks. “Ch-chanyeol?”

“Jongdae, fuck, okay—oh my God, here,” he instantly crouched and draped the coat around his shoulders.

Jongdae barely shifted. “What’s going on?” he stammered, teeth chattering.

Chanyeol looked for Jongdae’s hands, but he might as well be holding two snowballs. “Fuck, you’re freezing. Come on, get up.”

Jongdae drew into himself even more. “No—no, please, just tell me what happened, I can’t remember, I—”

Chanyeol ignored his protests and pulled him up to his feet. “You sleepwalked, Dae.”

Jongdae didn’t seem to understand the concept and he looked more and more freaked out each passing second. “But why am I...here? Where are we? Chanyeol?”

Chanyeol pulled him against himself and the other sagged, which Chanyeol worked in his favour since he could easily guide Jongdae’s arms in his coat and then zip it closed. “It’s okay, Dae. I found you, I got you.”

Jongdae remained unresponsive against him. “It’s so fucking cold,” he whimpered in his chest.

“You’re okay, let’s just get out of here. Let’s get you somewhere warm. Can you walk?”

Jongdae’s steps were wobbly and he tripped before they could even reach the sidewalk. 

“Cold. So cold. Please,” Jongdae exhaled in a lament.

“Look, Dae, I’d carry you anytime, you wouldn’t have to ask twice, but I really need you to walk right now. I need you to move. Make your blood circulate and shit. Okay?”

Jongdae’s eyes were huge and lost. “Okay.”

“I’ll lift you up until we get to where the pavement is even, then we walk back to the dorms. All right?”

Jongdae was quite light. Chanyeol was not surprised, he was so tiny. “There you go. Let go, come on. Let go.”

Jongdae kept holding onto him even after his feet touched the ground.

“Or don’t. I guess. I got you, let’s go.”

Chanyeol started walking. 

“Baek,” he panted in the phone as soon as he could balance Jongdae’s frame against himself as well as holding his phone against his ear. “Baek, I found him.”

_“Hold up, Soo—what did you say, Yeol? Did you find him?”_

“Yes, we’re walking back to the dorms. I got him, he’s freezing, but he’s all right. Call the others?”

_“I will call them right now. God, this is a relief. Is he awake?”_

“Kinda.”

_“Do you need help?”_

“I just need to throw him under a hot showerhead, I’ll see from there.”

_“I’ll send Kyungsoo over or something.”_

More than once Chanyeol thought that carrying Jongdae would have sorted the same effect as helping Jongdae walk, since he was basically dragging him forward and bearing basically the entirety of Jongdae’s weight, but it was still a little effective because when they got to the dorms Jongdae was panting because of the physical effort, instead of the panic, and he was also a lot more lucid. 

He kept holding on with both arms around Chanyeol, though.

Chanyeol focused on bringing him up to speed when Jongdae started sounding more coherent, hoping that it would make his own arms firmly wrapped around Jongdae go unnoticed as well. 

“How did you understand that I went sleepwalking?” he asked, the tip of his nose red and shiny.

“Dude, you left the door open and all your stuff was inside, your keys, everything,” Chanyeol explained.

Jongdae exhaled in relief once they were inside the lobby and the warmth of the air swathed him. They crossed a couple students, both clearly intoxicated and on their way to their own rooms, who waved and slurred a greeting in sympathy, probably thinking Chanyeol was dragging a piss drunk Jongdae back after a night out. 

In the elevator, once they were not walking anymore, Chanyeol noticed how bad the other was shaking. “Dae, maybe I should call an ambulance or something?”

“I can’t feel my toes but I think I’ll be alright?”

Chanyeol scoffed. As soon as the doors opened he picked Jongdae up bodily and literally ran to their room, ignoring the way Jongdae shrieked in surprise and then found it in himself to laugh a little.

He kicked the door open and put Jongdae down. “Bathroom, now. Give me that.”

Jongdae looked down at the coat he was clutching against himself, obviously too cold to rejoice at the perspective of letting it go, then back up at Chanyeol. “What?”

“You’re going to take the hottest shower of your entire life. _Then_ I’ll call an ambulance.”

“Come on, dude, I don’t—”

Chanyeol threw his own coat on the floor and crowded Jongdae inside the en-suite. “Shut up. Look at your toes, they’re fucking blue.” 

He started the shower and put one hand under the water jet to check its slow progress from Himalayan Glacier to Core of Mordor. Steam started filling the room; Chanyeol was already sweaty because of the anxiety and the sudden nightly weightlifting adventure, and this only made it worse. He wiped his forehead with his arm, huffing.

“Chanyeol, look at me. It’s not that bad.”

“Sit down,” he ordered.

Jongdae let himself fall on the closed lid of the toilet. “I’m fine.”

“Look. At. Your _fucking._ Toes.”

“I’d rather not, they’re ugly as shit?”

Chanyeol couldn’t find it in himself to laugh or even smile. Instead, he leaned over Jongdae and started to unzip his coat.

“That was kinda hot,” Jongdae commented with a breezy tone despite the chattering of his teeth.

Chanyeol met his eyes, confused. For sure Jongdae’s sudden temperature reference was about how the room had actually started to feel like they plunged into the Mordor. 

Jongdae held his gaze. His mouth pulled into a close lipped smile.

“Hey.”

Both jumped. Jongdae nearly slipped off the toilet.

“What the fuck, Minseok.”

“Sorry, the door was open,” Minseok said lowly. He was visibly relieved at the sight of his friend, but he immediately smirked. “Yeah, those toes are hideous. But Chanyeol is right, you must shower before you go from Ugly Toes to No Toes. I have boy scout training, I kinda know what I’m doing.”

“Kinda?” Jongdae whined, his teeth chattering still.

Minseok simply raised one of his perfect eyebrows, and Jongdae sighed and started fumbling to unzip his coat.

“Fuck, blood’s coming back—ah, this shit hurts.”

Chanyeol flinched and remembered how he had begun to help him with that, since Jongdae’s fingers were shaking and not fully operational, and when Jongdae started removing his shirt he decided he trusted Minseok’s boy scout experience 100%, and used the the coat to stammer something and excuse himself from the bathroom, because he was _not_ ready to put naked cute hot roommate into the shower himself.

“Ouch! Minseok, what the fuck? Are you trying to kill me? It burns!”

“It’s barely above lukewarm, idiot, get under the showerhead.”

“Argh! Shit! No—well. Okay, I see your point. Holy—fuck yes.”

“See? Cooperate and you might even be able to keep your ugly-ass toes.”

Chanyeol relaxed and hung their coats properly, moving silently to better eavesdrop because he needed to make sure the other was still okay.

Until Jongdae started warming up and straight out moaned.

Chanyeol had to sit down.

“Can you stand now?” Minseok said after a while, his voice muffled by the shower and the semi-closed door.

“Yeah. You can let go of me.” 

Jongdae’s voice was a lot clearer now that he wasn’t shivering anymore.

“Good, because I was not going to lather you up. I love you, but not that much.”

“Fuck you, Minnie. And hey, sorry about—you know. I don’t even know what time it is but it’s probably too late for you to be here making sure I don’t get hospitalised with hypothermia.”

“No bother, Dae. I was out partying. And it wouldn’t be a problem even if your roommate had dragged me out of bed pulling at my ankles.”

“Chanyeol?”

“Yeah. A little more and he would have summoned the army with the helicopters.”

Jongdae didn’t answer. Chanyeol sighed and started peeling off his own wet clothes, grabbing a towel.

Then the voice was a lot closer than before. “If you—”

Chanyeol yelled. “What the fuck, Minseok! Stop sneaking up on us!”

“Sorry. I was saying, I’ll get going. You should take a warm shower too after he’s done. Your own toes are on the line, Park.”

Nodding, Chanyeol looked at his soaked shoes. “I will. Thank you for everything, Minseok.”

Jongdae came out of the shower ten minutes later, wrapped in his bathrobe, the patches of visible skin flushed because of the warm water. He immediately spotted Chanyeol sadly patting his feet with a towel, which sent him into a frenzy of alarm and concern and Chanyeol didn’t have a choice other than showering as well to placate him.

“It’s _fine.”_ Chanyeol was starting to be exasperated. It was almost dawn and he had spent the last twenty minutes trying to convince Jongdae that he didn’t need to thank him.

“It is _not,_ ” Jongdae kept countering, standing in front of him. “It is not fine, you don’t realise, if you weren’t there, if you didn’t find me—what if I didn’t wake up and froze to death? What if I didn’t have you? I would’ve just—kept sitting there not knowing where to go, I—”

Chanyeol grabbed his shoulders. “Well, you were already awake and I didn’t do anything special, I just walked you back to the dorms. But if you need to talk about what happened, I’m all ears.”

Jongdae visibly fought his instinct to continue yelling that Chanyeol didn’t understand how grateful he was, but in the end he simply swallowed and stepped into Chanyeol’s space, hugging him. 

“Thank you, Yeol,” he whispered against his neck.

Chanyeol held him tighter. “Anytime, roommate.”

Jongdae sighed.

“It was scary.”

“I know.”

Jongdae also unhesitatingly tucked himself into Chanyeol’s bed that first night back.

Chanyeol decided it was because of the cold and the fright that Jongdae basically wrapped himself around him. His toes were still cold and not pleasurable under Chanyeol’s knees where they were currently tucked, despite the double layer of ugly woolen socks Chanyeol’s grandma knitted for him every year, but he endured because he needed all of that, too.

-

Kyungsoo handed Chanyeol his coffee and sat down next to him on the bench, as they watched Jongdae, Baekhyun and Jongin fail miserably at their attempts at building a snowman. The only place they were seemingly interested in putting the snow was inside of each other’s clothes, screaming galore. 

Usually Chanyeol would be the first to dive into that kind of fun, except that he had a meeting with his thesis advisor scheduled in less than one hour and he doubted dripping melted snow all over her cabinet moquette would improve the meeting results.

“I spent the greatest part of last week making sure Jongdae wouldn’t lose his feet to hypothermia, and look at the ungrateful little shit now,” Chanyeol grunted accepting the cup. He lifted the lid to check its content and sighed at the heavenly waft of scent. In the background, Jongdae wailed particularly loudly as Jongin grabbed the back of the waistband of his track pants and shoved snow into his underwear.

“You spent the greatest part of last week rubbing Jongdae’s feet so his toes wouldn’t fall off, and I’m sure he’s grateful for that, but the only reason why his underwear is currently full of snow might be that he wants you to take equally good care of his dick. You know, so it doesn’t fall off,” Kyungsoo rebutted, taking a sip from his own cup.

Chanyeol snorted. “Don’t be gross.”

Kyungsoo quirked a brow, but then scoffed. “I’m a realist and you’re dumb.”

On another bench on the other side of the field, Sehun was entertaining Yixing and Minseok. Probably talking shit. Though he pointed at him a couple of times, Chanyeol was not worried. He knew that Sehun could be a witty little bastard who liked to mock people, but he never actually spoke ill of his friends behind their backs. He also knew very well where the mockery could fade into being mean and was good at perceiving what could actually _hurt_ someone. One clear example of it had been Jongdae. Once Jongdae had finally felt comfortable with everyone enough to reveal about his parasomnia, Sehun never once touched the subject on his own initiative again.

“So,” Kyungsoo cleared his throat before Chanyeol could fully process Kyungsoo’s allusions. “Baek told me you aced your midterms. I’m very happy for you.”

Chanyeol sipped on his coffee. “Thanks. Considering I’ve chased Jongdae around the dorms every night and slept probably ten hours in total across midterm week, I consider my results nothing short of a miracle. How did yours go?”

Kyungsoo snorted. “I passed.”

“That’s the important part.”

“If it’s of any consolation, don’t think I’ve slept that much more than you have. Baekhyun employed very exerting ways to de-stress which involved me being awake and sweaty most of the night, every night.”

“I literally do not want to know anything about that, and it doesn’t console me at all, but thank you, Soo.”

“You’re welcome.”

Chanyeol was about to answer when a snowball hit him in the face.

“Sorry, Yeol! That was for Kyungsoo!” Jongdae yelled.

“Hey! At least one of us should remain warm and dry to be able to provide first aid at any given moment!”

“Sorry, roommate!”

Chanyeol huffed and inspected the damage, finding out with relief that he hadn’t jostled his coffee enough to spill it.

Kyungsoo helped him brush the snow off his beanie and eyebrows. “And _this_ is why I always ask the baristas to put a lid on my drinks when I know I’m about to be around Jongdae.”

Chanyeol couldn’t help but laugh. He knew a thing or two about what Kyungsoo was talking about. Jongdae was a menace.

After a while, Kyungsoo stood up to go to class and Jongdae got tired of being bullied by Baekhyun, so he sagged on the bench next to Chanyeol, collapsing onto him and transferring more snow onto his clothes and skin.

“Hey, remember what I said about who should stay warm and dry at all times?”

Jongdae peeled his head from his shoulder, which obviously made him regret he had a mouth. “Sorry. Oh, speaking of warm and dry, if you’re free later this afternoon, would you like to come with me to that exhibition I was telling you about? I can go change my clothes real quick.”

Chanyeol checked his wristwatch. “I have a meeting with my thesis advisor in fifteen minutes. It won’t take long, go change and let’s meet at the gates?”

“Cool!”

“Here, warm up.” Chanyeol offered his cup. 

Jongdae thanked him with a huge smile and ran off. Baekhyun took his place on the bench, flinching and hissing when the snow in his underwear shifted in unwanted places and started melting. A process he described in great detail despite Chanyeol’s lack of interest.

Once he finally sat still he huffed. “What’s up? My team on LoL is down a player today, wanna fill in?”

“You know, it’s not very flattering how you ask me only when you’re down a player.”

“And if I flattered you, would you join?”

“Sorry Baek, I’m going with Dae to the center.”

“Ooh, I see someone got a little date!”

“What? No, he just didn’t want to go alone. Kyungsoo has class.”

“‘You ask me only when you don’t have anyone else,’” Baekhyun mimicked him. He even got the voice down after years of practice. “You self-deprecating idiot. Look around you, I see six of us hanging out here being absolutely jobless and yet he only asked _you_ even though half of those present are in his same major and could definitely appreciate a bunch of boring pictures of random buildings better than you ever could.”

As had already been established, Chanyeol was a dumbass. So he kept crushing his hopes because it was better than crushing his heart. “Maybe Minseok already went to the exhibition.”

“Ugh, get out of here or you’ll be late to your date. I can’t stand you. Please don’t turn into another Sehun.”

“He should be so lucky,” Sehun muttered as he walked past them, hand in hand with Jongin.

-

Chanyeol had a great time with Jongdae, as usual, so great that he had wished the afternoon would never end and he could just keep listening to Jongdae gush about the bunch of boring pictures of random buildings that were on display, because his enthusiasm was so infectious, and because Chanyeol was more than a little whipped for his smile, and Jongdae insisted on buying him a hot chocolate afterwards and he only tripped once as he carried their tray and he didn’t even spill that much of it, and they kept laughing and joking and talking all the way back to campus.

And Chanyeol was not the only one looking a little sad when they parted ways, back at the dorms, but as usual he shrugged it off and walked away. 

After his little-date-that-was-not-a-date, he succumbed to Baekhyun’s pleas and went to his room to play a couple of tournaments, ignoring the way Kyungsoo and Baekhyun would try to allude to the date being, well, a date.

The couple of tournaments turned into more tournaments, and then into a tickle fight between childhood friends, and then into Chanyeol third wheeling and laying across their laps because he was sleepy.

So it was late when he made it back to his room, and he was exhausted. He planned to change into his pajamas quickly, slip under the covers and turn his phone and the lights off without waking up Jongdae who would surely be sleeping (in Chanyeol’s bed!?).

He opened the door with a technique he perfected after months of exercise, slipping one arm upwards to still whatever noise-producing device from doing its job before opening the door completely. The bells had been removed; after the incident that saw Jongdae waking up in the snow, Chanyeol had decided it was time to change the bells for a wind-chime. It was more shrilling and Jongdae was not used to the sound. So far it had a 100% efficacy rate.

But Jongdae was not in either of their beds. He was staring at him standing in the middle of the room.

“Dae?” Chanyeol closed the door and released the wind-chime.

Jongdae didn’t answer, so Chanyeol assumed he was sleepwalking. He opened his mouth to say something comforting as usual, something that would persuade Jongdae to just wiggle under the covers. But Jongdae was faster; he started walking up to him.

“Chanyeol, listen. I have something I’ve been meaning to tell you and I—” he started, his voice rough. 

Before Chanyeol could do much more than raise a brow, Jongdae exhaled. He reached up with one hand, hesitated, then tiptoed and kissed him.

Chanyeol was so shocked that when something soft touched his lips, it took him a disproportionately large amount of time to realise it was another pair of lips. 

He flinched backwards, his eyes snapping open. 

Not even ten years of experience in the sleepwalking assistance field would have prepared Chanyeol for this specific occurrence.

How was he supposed to act when the subconscious of a person he so obviously cared about started behaving as if it had developed its own independent feelings? Awake Jongdae never got angry at his closet because it didn’t magically produce an iced americano, so Chanyeol vividly hoped Awake Jongdae wouldn’t be upset with Chanyeol if he didn’t kiss him back. 

Because Awake Jongdae wouldn’t even know that Asleep Jongdae had kissed him first.

So it was all good and Chanyeol could pretend his own dreams hadn’t just become reality. 

Both heartened and disheartened at the same time, Chanyeol sighed. He lowered his gaze to the floor, felt Jongdae’s hesitant hand slip from his face. 

The sound of their breaths, so close one another, was unbearable. Chanyeol needed to fill the silence; not for the sleepwalker, but for himself.

He cleared his throat. “Jesus Christ, man. Your asleep persona has done weird shit in the past but this one beats them all,” he sighed, turning his back to Jongdae. “Go back to sleep, I will pretend I will be able to sleep at all, too.”

Everything got really quiet.

Then Jongdae talked.

“You—shit.”

Chanyeol had barely the time to register the feeling of two very small palms in his back and a brief moment of void before he slammed against the closet. If he didn’t possess basic primate instincts that made him lift his arms, he would have broken his nose on the plywood.

“What the fuck, Jongdae?” he groaned, trying to hold himself upright.

“No, _you,_ what the fuck, _Yeol!_ ”

That sounded very Awake.

_Shit._

Chanyeol panted and turned to look at him. Jongdae was looking down at him with a surly look in his eyes. 

“What’s going on?!” Chanyeol yelled, sounding accusatory instead of panicky.

Jongdae growled and lifted a foot to kick him, but he never hit him. “Are you kidding me?”

Whatever face Chanyeol was making, whatever mix of terrified and bewildered and confused he was currently looking, Jongdae obviously did not appreciate. 

He just kept staring at him, his brows furrowed, and the more Chanyeol stared back without a reaction, the more his frown became deeply etched to his features. 

Chanyeol still hadn’t dared to breathe.

“Okay,” Jongdae said quietly in the end. “This is the worst. I can’t even leave because this is my fucking room.”

“Are you—awake?” Chanyeol choked out, approximately ten minutes too late.

Jongdae looked up at him, squinted, then squeezed his eyes shut and walked backwards until he fell sitting on the bed. He felt around to grab the edge of the duvet. “Awake? Oh, no, dude, I am sleeping. I am _so_ asleep, whew. I told you I do weird shit when I’m asleep. Haha. This never happened. Goodnight!”

He wrapped himself in the duvet and flopped backwards like a beached fish, giving his back to Chanyeol.

Chanyeol stared at the lump in the covers for a long time, before he gently tapped on what he assumed was Jongdae’s shoulder. “Jongdae? Are you awake?”

The lump sighed a very heartfelt “goddammit”. Jongdae emerged, unfurled himself, and slowly rose to his feet. 

“I should have seized the opportunity and pretended I was actually asleep from the very beginning,” Jongdae grumbled under his breath. “That would have been the best solution. You would tell me about it tomorrow over breakfast laughing about it and I would have laughed too and, well, probably died inside, but at least I wouldn’t have to—”

Jongdae circumvented Chanyeol and tried to put his shoes on balancing on one foot at a time, near the door. He failed at that, and fell and crashed against the door. The wind-chime protested.

To testify the state of complete utter shock Chanyeol was in, for the first time in his life his quick reflexes didn’t activate quickly enough to save Jongdae from a new collection of bruises.

“Where are you going?” he croaked when Jongdae grabbed the handle with one shoe still in his hand. 

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m going to crash at Minseok’s. Pretend this didn’t happen. Bye.”

“Wait!”

The door slammed shut very loudly, accompanied by the clanging of the wind-chime. Someone in one of the adjacent rooms cursed hippie gadgets loudly enough to be heard by Chanyeol. 

Chanyeol stood there like the absolute moron he was, staring at the innocent wind-chime and touching his lips like a foolish lead in a kdrama.

Foolish, he was foolish indeed.

“Please tell me Jongdae is not climbing a crane in his sleep or something,” Kyungsoo croaked slowly through the door, one of his eyes glued closed by the sleep Chanyeol just interrupted. 

“No—he? We—nevermind. On what floor does Minseok sleep?”

Blinking his only usable eye in slow-motion and then squinting it, Kyungsoo produced a very legitimate: “What the fuck, Chanyeol.”

“Please? Jongdae said he was going to crash at Minseok’s? I need to talk to him. Right now. Ten minutes ago, actually—it’s important. Kyungsoo. Please. What’s Minseok’s room number?”

Baekhyun snored loudly from inside.

Kyungsoo kept moving awfully slowly. First he turned his head to look at Baekhyun, probably cursing him for not being awake and available to deal with his best friend, and then probably cursing himself for not having the heart to wake him up to make him deal with his best friend. 

Then he scratched his head. He rubbed his still closed eye, which opened with some difficulty.

“What happened?” he asked again.

“It’s _important,_ Kyungsoo!”

Kyungsoo stared at Chanyeol for a solid minute.

It was a double torture; the itch under the sole of Chanyeol’s feet that let him know he should have bolted to Jongdae’s chase the minute he got up from his bed instead of standing like the useless lamppost he was trying to put two braincells together, and the sharp assessing gaze of Kyungsoo that kept him rooted there. 

Kyungsoo pursed his lips. “He finally kissed you and you acted like an idiot.”

“You’re way too good at this.”

“Fourth floor, first room on the right when you get out of the elevator. Run.”

Chanyeol didn’t even spare a second to say “thank you”.

Minseok didn’t answer the door. Chanyeol was about to start banging on it and actually considering kicking it open, with no consideration whatsoever for the rest of the inhabitants of the floor. Or for Minseok’s roommate. Or Minseok himself.

Minseok, who appeared very suddenly and very murderously, his glare fixed on Chanyeol’s chest (his eye level). Before he could even lift his gaze to look at his face to identify him properly, something surely switched in his brain because he sagged against the doorframe. “Is it Jongdae again?” he asked, not vexed or anything, just a little sad.

“No, I mean, yes—wait a minute,” Chanyeol stuttered. Maybe he should have registered this detail sooner. “Jongdae’s not here?”

“Unless he snuck in and hid in my closet while Changmin and I were asleep, no, I don’t think he’s here.”

“Why is he not here? Are you sure?”

“Why would he be here? I’m _not_ checking inside my closet. You’re his roommate _and_ his crush, Park, _your_ room is the only plausible place where he would be at five in the morning.”

“I’m his... what?”

“Jesus Christ,” Minseok yawned, but Chanyeol was almost sure that Minseok’s hand was placed in front of his face not only out of politeness, but also to conceal amusement.

“He lied to me! He said he was going to be here!”

“Well, I don’t know how to help you. Unless he told you he was going to be here while he was already sleepwalking, in that case we have to be very concerned. I can go into rescue mode in approximately three seconds, but you call the shots.”

“I don’t—think so?”

“Then goodnight.”

“Wait! What if I—Minseok, maybe he _was_ sleepwalking after all.”

Minseok suddenly looked more awake. “You didn’t follow him?”

“I wasn’t sure?”

Minseok poked his head in the hallway, looking left and right as if he expected Jongdae to be leaning against a wall behind Chanyeol waving his hand at them, and then nodded. “Okay. I’ll grab my keys, give me a second.”

“Wait!” Chanyeol exclaimed.

“What now?”

“I don’t think he was sleepwalking, I just wanted to make sure you weren’t lying to me and he was actually in your closet.”

Minseok rolled his eyes, groaned, and slammed the door on his face.

“Goodnight, and thank you,” Chanyeol said to the door, hoping Minseok would hear him. 

Someone poked his head from a door on his right. “It’s almost 3 a.m., will you shut the fuck up?” a student growled down the hallway. 

Chanyeol muttered an apology and ran back to the stairs.

He flew down and ran back to his room. At this point he was trembling, so much that it took him a while to finally jam the right key in the lock. He stumbled in and for a second he was surprised that the light was on. He didn’t remember leaving it on.

He also didn’t remember having left Jongdae standing in the middle of the room. 

It felt like a deja-vu, or like the past 20 minutes didn’t exist.

“Where were you?”

They blurted out at the same time.

They frowned at each other.

“I was looking for you!”

“This is still my room!”

Chanyeol swallowed. “Jongdae, please, I don’t want to fight—”

“Good!” Jongdae jumped in. “Perfect. Me neither. That’s why I came back—to apologise.”

“No— _I_ wanted to apologise, I tried to look for you but Minseok said you weren’t there.”

Jongdae put a hand on his face and exhaled. “You woke Minseok up?”

“Yeah, well, Kyungsoo too. And the whole fourth floor, probably. But that’s irrelevant. You said you would be at Minseok’s! I got mad worried about you when I didn’t find you!”

“What, you thought I was sleepwalking _again_ and I escaped your watchful eye? You developed a guardian complex or something?”

“What? No, I thought you were mad at me and you lied to me about where you would be just to get rid of me or something!”

“Oh, no. This is exactly what I was scared of, you thinking I would be mad at you. I didn’t even reach Minseok’s room, I turned around immediately but when I was back here you were already gone, and then I went to knock at Sehun’s but he said he hadn’t seen you at all—”

“You woke Sehun up?”

“Well, Jongin too, but I was worried?” Jongdae’s brows kept jumping, alternating exasperation to sorrow. “Please don’t think I am mad at you, okay? I can’t be mad at you for not wanting to kiss me. That’d be stupid. I mean, I’m fine. I slipped. It’s cool. We can be cool. We can forget about it and—yeah. Or not. Maybe not. I’m really sorry I fucked up, man, if you’d like us to be awkward and distant, that’s okay, too.”

Chanyeol’s throat felt so dry that he was surprised at himself for being able to utter a parroting “That’s okay, too?”

And then Jongdae looked so sad. 

He inhaled deeply and tried a small smile, contracting unnaturally those pretty corners of his mouth. His eyebrows tilted in the middle, with a sad, pitiful quirk. “Yeah, Yeol. That’s okay, too.”

Chaneyol tried to swallow, but he almost choked. 

Why was it so easy for Jongdae to let it go? Had it been as meaningless as Jongdae was trying to make it? Had Chanyeol been ultimately right about Jongdae not reciprocating his feelings?

The pause became longer. Jongdae fidgeted, tried that painful smile again. 

Chanyeol clenched his fists. “No, Jongdae. That is not okay at all.”

And then it was just beautiful to watch his upset and disappointment turn into shock when Chanyeol started walking towards him, raising his hands, and that confused but expectant expression was even more beautiful as it got closer, and then Chanyeol had his hands cradling the sides of Jongdae’s face.

Se beautiful up close like this.

“Were you awake?”

Jongdae’s eyes were wide, his brows crooked in the center. He glanced at Chanyeol’s lips, then back up into his eyes, and Chanyeol felt the bravest he had felt in a long while.

Jongdae licked his lips before answering. “Yes, you idiot, I was awake”

Chanyeol smiled. “Fuck yeah.”

And he kissed Jongdae.

And Jongdae kissed him back, his hands creeping up his waist, on his back, his nape, and he started pushing him back until Chanyeol was sitting on his bed and Jongdae was kneeling at the sides of his hips. He felt him lick at his lower lip and the kiss deepened, so quickly, so naturally, and Chanyeol unhesitatingly tipped back dragging Jongdae with himself until Jongdae was laying on top of him and Chanyeol had never before in his life felt so blissful, so completely content, if yet a little incredulous.

“Just so you know,” Jongdae said against his lips, and he had to clear his throat. “I am awake. I am very fucking awake. Yeol, shit, I—I think I spent every awake moment in the past months wanting to do just this.” 

“Guh,” was the only intelligible response Chanyeol could provide at the moment, trying to piece everything together, to make it make sense. Finding out he was not as delusional as he had forbidden himself to be he had been was currently making him feel very light-headed. He had one arm swung around Jongdae’s tiny waist and the other hand tangled in his hair, and his lips were so! soft!

Jongdae put his forehead against his. “And then I finally grow some balls and decide to risk it all, and you think I’m sleepwalking!” he whined and hit his chest, but Chanyeol pulled him closer again until Jongdae lost his balance and fell on the mattress next to him.

They readjusted to be facing each other, Chanyeol still holding onto that small waist as if Jongdae would get up and leave again.

“I hate being a sleepwalker.”

“Oh, no! I’m sorry, Dae. It’s my fault. I just couldn’t believe it. I thought you didn’t like me!”

“I have told you several times that I like you!”

“I mean, like _like_ me. Like me like—like this!”

Jongdae frowned. “I thought _you_ didn’t like me like this! I’ve had the most ridiculous crush on you since the moment you stepped into this room for the first time, Yeol. Oh, God, this is so embarrassing. The day I met you, when I went to say goodbye to Junmyeon? I talked his ears off about how cute you were. Poor Myeonnie didn’t even get to say anything about his damn trip because he had to listen to me gushing about a total stranger.”

Chanyeol snorts. “Do you have any idea how many times I had emergency meetings at the bleachers with Baekhyun, Sehun and Jongin because I felt like my heart was going to reach capacity and burst? You’re so sweet and so handsome it’s a miracle I haven’t gone cross eyed yet.”

Jongdae rolled his eyes, and hid against his chest. “As if you weren’t the funniest, most thoughtful, hottest guy of the country. Why didn’t you say anything?”

“First of all, I thought I was being completely obvious. Second of all, I wasn’t going to throw away what we had, dumbass.”

At that, Jongdae sighed. “Me neither. It was a scary thought.”

Chanyeol held Jongdae closer and took a minute to rearrange all the parts of his brain that were floating into a state of indescribable happiness. He kinda needed them to work. He needed them to help him believe this was real and it could continue in the future.

Something popped up in his brain as soon as it was reassembled. “You’re not actually a cuddly sleepwalker, aren’t you.”

Jongdae blinked. 

Chanyeol frowned. 

Jongdae looked away. “Junmyeon told you that.”

“Junmyeon told me that, yes.”

“I’m a cuddly… person?”

Chanyeol snorted. “You totally cuddled me all this time! Hiding behind the excuse of your sleepwalking!”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t seem to mind.”

Now Chanyeol was laughing openly. “I did not!”

Jongdae grins, a faint blush on his cheeks. “It really helped to share a bed,” he explained quietly. “That was not me trying to invade your personal space, it was really something I did in the past, too. But sometimes during the night you were all snuggly and hugged me back. So I kept doing it.”

“Please, keep doing it.”

Oh, the prettiness of the blush on his cheeks. “Okay.”

There was a pause.

“We, uhm, we should sleep?” Jongdae tried, lifting on his elbows to look at him.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah, we should,” Chanyeol stuttered.

Jongdae smiled bashfully. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Chanyeol repeated, his eyes closing when Jongdae’s lips touched his again, so lightly, so gently, he thought he was going to combust. 

He barely heard the wind-chime going off, and the muffled “oh my god they’re here” and “ew, look” and “shut the fuck up, finally—ouch” and “that’s actually kinda cute” and “let’s fucking go” that followed, everything topped by the door closing in a triumph of metal wind-chimes.

Jongdae smiled in the kiss. Chanyeol couldn’t help laughing, and they just laid there laughing their nervousness out, and then squeezing it in until they fell asleep.

-

Chanyeol was Very Confused when he went back to his room two days later and found out Jongdae had moved his own bed across the room next to Chanyeol’s.

Sehun, who was behind him, snorted. “Jongdae, what the hell? You can’t bear being away from your precious _boyfriend_ even at night?”

Baekhyun rubbed it in. “It’s already bad enough that you two hold hands literally all the time.”

Jongdae appeared from where he was adjusting the cables of the lamp beside the headboard. “Nice one. But I’ve been sleeping in Chanyeol’s bed since before Christmas.”

“What.”

“You really have the observational skills of a somnambulist during an episode, Sehunnie” Jongdae snorted. “If I do say so myself,” then he addressed Baekhyun who was leaning on the doorframe behind them. “I’m almost done, give me five minutes to wash up and we can go grab dinner.”

Baekhyun waved a hand, amused, and Sehun walked away muttering something about having to meet Jongin at the gym and being done with them.

Chanyeol cleared his throat. “Exactly because we have been sleeping in my bed for months I wonder why you moved yours.”

Jongdae’s head peaked from behind the headboard again. “When you asked me whether I was single I told you that I was but you’d definitely notice when that would change because we’d have room arrangements to make.” He made a flowery gesture towards their beds. “Here’s the room arrangement.”

Chanyeol was short-circuiting. “I thought you meant you’d... change rooms to be with your boyfriend?”

Baekhyun flicked his ear. “He’s literally dating his roommate, you idiot. Gosh, Jongdae, what do you even see in him.”

Chanyeol sputtered. “But we were already sleeping in the same bed!”

“Yeah? And it was tiny as fuck?”

“Ooh,” Baekhyun clapped gleefully. “Yeol, I think he wants to fuck.” 

“Thank you,” Jongdae confirmed. With a last click, the lamp turned on. He switched on and off a few times, before he moved to stand up and hit his head against the open window. As he cussed and lifted himself up, Chanyeol experienced an increase in body temperature of about four thousand degrees. Plus many mental images that—well.

“Oh.”

“‘Oh,’ what, Park Chanyeol?” Jongdae walked to the bathroom. 

“You know,” Baekhyun called after him. “If you want to call off our dinner it’s fine by me, it’s about time that Chanyeol gets some action, so I don’t mind stepping aside for the greater good. I am a grown-up, I can go to Burger King by myself, no biggie.”

Chanyeol readily but silently agreed to this plan.

Jongdae leaned on the doorframe. “Yeah, thank you, but no. I’m starving. Chanyeol can get laid later.”

“I—” Chanyeol gurgled.

Jongdae smiled at him, a small, sweet, almost private smile that contrasted with the object of their conversation, before closing the door. 

Baekhyun shook his head where he was standing, then proceeded to open Chanyeol’s closet and dig out a certain box of which he carefully inspected the contents. “You’re all set,” he declared after having shown concerning knowledge of the locations of Chanyeol’s private storages. Knowledge probably inherited by Sehun. “Make me proud,” he singsung patting his back.

Chanyeol groaned into his own hand.

“Hey,” Baekhyun whispered. “You're a verified dumbass and given the experience, do you think you can tell whether, you know... he's sleepwalking or not as you get naked—”

Chanyeol hit his nape so powerfully that the smacking sound made Jongdae come out to check who just tried to murder who. 

-

Nothing moved for a while. Chanyeol closed his eyes; he could feel himself finally growing drowsy, his limbs heavier and heavier each passing breath.

As it had happened way too frequently for Chanyeol to be surprised in the slightest, Jongdae entered his NREM phase before Chanyeol was even halfway through his thinking processes. 

In his defence, it took even more time than usual to realign his brain cells, which had been blown away and blown up one by one in the journey from the door, into which Chanyeol had pressed Jongdae for a searing kiss, to the bed, the bedtime activities in between ending with Jongdae falling asleep and drooling onto his naked chest after a long while of chuckling and whispering silly sweet things to each other.

It was perfect. Jongdae was perfect. 

Chanyeol was ready to burst out yelling the L word.

It started with a little twitching and a lot of annoyed mumbling that sounded very awake, and Jongdae pushed himself up on his elbows.

“Where are you going?” Chanyeol asked.

Jongdae sniffled. “I need to water my plants.”

Yeah, because being Chanyeol a Whipped Dumbass, the day after their first kiss he had decided to buy Jongdae two plants, following a desire that Asleep Jongdae had expressed repeatedly. 

Awake Jongdae had loved them. He was so sweet.

Jongdae tried to move again but Chanyeol didn’t have extremely long limbs for other purposes than to keep them where they were, wrapped them around the sleepwalker. “Dae, stay here with me, come on.”

“What about my plants?”

“They will be fine. I watered them before bed.”

Jongdae turned his head to look around at things Chanyeol would never see. “You did.”

“Of course I did.”

Pondering for a while, Jongdae seemed determined to slip out of their joined beds. But then he laid down on top of Chanyeol again. “You’re so great, Yeol.”

Chanyeol chuckled, caressing the back of his head. “Thank you, Dae.”

Jongdae sleepily kissed his neck, before wiggling into a comfortable position and remaining silent. 

Used to waiting for a while, Chanyeol didn’t move. Then he hugged Jongdae closer and closed his eyes. 

“I think I love you,” he whispered in Jongdae’s hair.

Jongdae stirred a little. “Pineapple pizza is awful,” he mumbled, very assertive in his unconsciousness.

Chanyeol had a very hard time trying not to shake him awake with his laughter. 

He had never been so happy about being a dumbass who didn’t know his own student code and messed up his dorm applications, because it landed him in the life of Kim Jongdae. It was a weird, nocturnal life, but if he could make it easier by simply wrapping his arms around Jongdae as they slept, he was never going to complain about the task. Chanyeol’s life was a life of service.

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> I know virtually nothing about Jongdae's and Chanyeol's majors. Especially Chanyeol's. Even uploading a story on ao3 challenges me, I am very technology impaired. So forgive whatever heresy I might have accidentally included in the story.
> 
> Thank you once again to my lovely beta, who tolerated the unforgivable lack of Minseok in this story and came to the rescue.


End file.
